He had looked at her, and
danced with her, and done the best with his gloves and his cravat, and
had let her see by twenty unmistakable signs that in order to be
perfectly happy he must be near her. Her gloves, and her flowers, and
her other little properties were sweeter to him than any scents, and
were more valuable in his eyes than precious stones. But he had never as
yet actually asked her to love him. But she was so quick a linguist that
she had understood down to the last letter what all these tokens had
meant. Her cousin, Captain Scarborough, was to her magnificent,
powerful, but terrible withal. She had asked herself a thousand times
whether it would be possible for her to love him and to become his wife.
She had never quite given even to herself an answer to this question
till she had suddenly found herself enabled to do so by his
over-confidence in asking her to confess that she loved him. She had
never acknowledged anything, even to herself, as to Harry Annesley. She
had never told herself that it would be possible that he should ask her
any such question. She had a wild, dreamy, fearful feeling that,
although it would be possible to her to refuse her cousin, it would be
impossible that she should marry any other while he should still be
desirous of making her his wife.
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