Although Mary had little hopes of being able to prevail by any efforts of reason, she yet tried to make her mother comprehend the nature of her engagement with Colonel Lennox as of a sacred nature, and too binding ever to be dissolved.  But Lady Juliana’s wrath blazed forth with redoubled violence at the very mention of an engagement.  She had never heard of anything so improper.  Colonel Lennox must be a most unprincipled man to lead her daughter into an engagement unsanctioned by her; and she had acted in the most improper manner in allowing herself to form an attachment without the consent of those who had the best title to dispose of her.  The person who could act thus was not fit to be trusted, and in future it would be necessary for her to have her constantly under her own eye.

Mary found her candour had therefore only reduced her to the alternative of either openly rebelling, or of submitting to be talked at, and watched, and guarded, as if she had been detected in carrying on some improper clandestine intercourse.  But she submitted to all the restrictions that were imposed and the torments that were inflicted, if not with the heroism of a martyr, at least with the meekness of one; for no murmur escaped her lips.  She was only anxious to conceal from others the extent of her mother’s folly and injustice, and took every opportunity of entreating Colonel Lennox’s silence and forbearance.  It required, indeed, all her influence to induce him to submit patiently to the treatment he experienced.  Lady Juliana had so often repeated to Mary that it was the greatest presumption in Colonel Lennox to aspire to a daughter of hers, that she had fairly talked herself into the belief that he was all she asserted him to be—­a man of neither birth nor fortune certainly a Scotsman from his name—­consequently having thousands of poor cousins and vulgar relations of every description.  And she was determined that no daughter of hers should ever marry a man whose family connections she knew nothing about.  She had suffered a great deal too much from her (Mary’s) father’s low relations ever to run the risk of anything of the same kind happening again.  In short, she at length made it out clearly, to her own satisfaction, that Colonel Lennox was scarcely a gentleman; and she therefore considered it as her duty to treat him on every occasion with the most marked rudeness.  Colonel Lennox pitied her folly too much to be hurt by her ill-breeding and malevolence, but he could scarcely reconcile it to his notions of duty that Mary’s superior mind should submit to the thraldom of one who evidently knew not good from evil.

Lady Emily was so much engrossed by her own affairs that for some time all this went on unnoticed by her.  At length she was struck with Mary’s dejection, and observed that Colonel Lennox seemed also dispirited; but, imputing it to a lover’s quarrel, she laughingly taxed them with it.  Although Mary could, suppress the cause of her uneasiness, she was too ingenuous to deny it; and, being pressed by her cousin, she at length disclosed to her the cause of her sorrow.