If it had been pride
that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a betise was
singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that
she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the
fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him,
that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy
somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition- as he saw it-
even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it; and
to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to
criticize would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised
him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left
her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost
herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her
vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a
cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and
going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her
friend, really frightened at herself.
CHAPTER 13
It was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice- she had no
desire whatever for that- that led her to speak to her uncle of what
had taken place.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197