Status Updates From Doctor Thorne (Chronicles o...

Lady Amelia sucks

And why are there so many characters with named
beginning with A? Amelia, Arabella, Augusta, Alexandria (mother and daughter have the same name!). Seriously Trollope could have used some other letters when picking names for this family!

(...) Having put her penny label on it, she handed it, with an open brow and an unembarrassed face, to the baker's wife, who was Her Majesty's postmistress at Greshamsbury; and, having so finished her work, she returned to see the table prepared for her uncle's dinner. (...)

On reaching home, he found a note from Lady Scatcherd informing him that Dr. Fillgrave had once more been at Boxall Hill, and that, on this occasion, he had left the house without anger.

Dr. Thorne had nothing more to say, so he got up and went to his patient in the next room.
'If he disapproves of it, why does he not say so?' said Mary to herself. 'Why does he not advise me?'
But he was not so easy to give advice while Sir Louis Scatcherd was lying there in that state.

(...) And, still restraining her tears, she got safely to her bedroom. In what way she may have shown her strength there, it would not be well for us to inquire.

Frank stayed but three minutes in the house; gave another kiss to Lady Scatcherd, getting three in return, and thereby infinitely disgusting Sir Louis, shook hands, anything but warmly, with the young baronet, and just felt the warmth of Mary's hand within his own. He also felt the warmth of her eyes' last glance, and rode home a happy man.

And then Lady Arabella stalked off, not without full observation from Mrs Yates Umbleby and her friend Miss Gustring, who lived close by.

The doctor was not a lover of money, and he did his best to get rid of such pernicious thoughts. But his longings, perhaps, were not so much that Mary should be rich as that he should have the power of heaping coals of fire upon the heads of those people who had so injured her.

Page 236:

Frank Gresham had been born and bred a Conservative, whereas the Duke of Omnium was well known as a consistent Whig. There is no one so devoutly resolved to admit of no superior as your Conservative, born and bred, no one so inclined to high domestic despotism as your thoroughgoing, consistent old Whig.

Page 195:

And then the ladies retired. His aunt, with a good-natured smile on her face, came to him as she was leaving the room, the last of the bevy, and, putting her hand on his arm, led him out into a small, unoccupied chamber that opened from the grand saloon.

The doctor contrived to escape without giving a definite answer to this question; and then, having paid his compliments to Lady Scatcherd, remounted his cob and rode back to Greshamsbury.

The doctor turned his head away; for though the occasion was serious, he could not help smiling at the malicious vengeance with which his friend proposed to gratify himself.

And so the interview had ended. Frank, of course, went upstairs to see if his new pocket-pistols were all ready, properly cleaned, loaded, and capped, should he find, after a few days' experience, that prolonged existence was unendurable.
However, he managed to live through the subsequent period, doubtless with the view of preventing any disappointment to his father's guests.

And so Mary Thorne grew up under the doctor's eye, and at the beginning of our tale, she was one of the guests assembled at Greshamsbury on the coming of age of the heir, she herself having then arrived at the same period of her life.