She meted him justice; she admitted that he had spoken in a lover-like tone.  Had it not been for the iteration of “the world”, she would not have objected critically to his words, though they were words of downright appropriation.  He had the right to use them, since she was to be married to him.  But if he had only waited before playing the privileged lover!

Sir Willoughby was enraptured with her.  Even so purely coldly, statue-like, Dian-like, would he have prescribed his bride’s reception of his caress.  The suffusion of crimson coming over her subsequently, showing her divinely feminine in reflective bashfulness, agreed with his highest definitions of female character.

“Let me conduct you to the garden, my love,” he said.

She replied:  “I think I would rather go to my room.”

“I will send you a wild-flower posy.”

“Flowers, no; I do not like them to be gathered.”

“I will wait for you on the lawn.”

“My head is rather heavy.”

His deep concern and tenderness brought him close.

She assured him sparklingly that she was well.  She was ready to accompany him to the garden and stroll over the park.

“Headache it is not,” she added.

But she had to pay the fee for inviting a solicitous accepted gentleman’s proximity.

This time she blamed herself and him, and the world he abused, and destiny into the bargain.  And she cared less about the probation; but she craved for liberty.  With a frigidity that astonished her, she marvelled at the act of kissing, and at the obligation it forced upon an inanimate person to be an accomplice.  Why was she not free?  By what strange right was it that she was treated as a possession?

“I will try to walk off the heaviness,” she said.

“My own girl must not fatigue herself.”

“Oh, no; I shall not.”

“Sit with me.  Your Willoughby is your devoted attendant.”

“I have a desire for the air.”

“Then we will walk out.”

She was horrified to think how far she had drawn away from him, and now placed her hand on his arm to appease her self-accusations and propitiate duty.  He spoke as she had wished, his manner was what she had wished; she was his bride, almost his wife; her conduct was a kind of madness; she could not understand it.

Good sense and duty counselled her to control her wayward spirit.

He fondled her hand, and to that she grew accustomed; her hand was at a distance.  And what is a hand?  Leaving it where it was, she treated it as a link between herself and dutiful goodness.  Two months hence she was a bondwoman for life!  She regretted that she had not gone to her room to strengthen herself with a review of her situation, and meet him thoroughly resigned to her fate.  She fancied she would have come down to him amicably.  It was his present respectfulness and easy conversation that tricked her burning nerves with the fancy.  Five weeks of perfect liberty in the mountains, she thought, would have prepared her for the days of bells.  All that she required was a separation offering new scenes, where she might reflect undisturbed, feel clear again.