However angry he might be with the events of which she was the cause, she was too innocent and meek to justify him in being more than cool; but his awkwardness was so great, that many a man of the world has met his greatest enemy, each knowing the other's hatred, with less freezing distance of manner than Mr.Buxton's to Maggie.

While she went simply on in her own path, loving him the more through all, for old kindness' sake, and because he was Frank's father, he shunned meeting her with such evident and painful anxiety, that at last she tried to spare him the encounter, and hurried out of church, or lingered behind all, in order to avoid the only chance they now had of being forced to speak; for she no longer went to the dear house in Combehurst, though Erminia came to see her more than ever.
Mrs.Browne was perplexed and annoyed beyond measure.

She upbraided Mr.
Buxton to every one but Maggie.

To her she said--"Any one in their senses might have foreseen what had happened, and would have thought well about it, before they went and fell in love with a young man of such expectations as Mr.Frank Buxton." In the middle of all this dismay, Edward came over from Woodchester for a day or two.

He had been told of the engagement, in a letter from Maggie herself; but if was too sacred a subject for her to enlarge upon to him; and Mrs.Browne was no letter writer.