to accept the addresses of others whom she did not love,—­but this she had done at the moment almost of her first introduction to the marvellous world in which she was now living.  As days went on she ceased to be a child, and her courage grew within her.  She became conscious of an identity of her own, which feeling was produced in great part by the contempt which accompanied her increasing familiarity with grand people and grand names and grand things.  She was no longer afraid of saying No to the Nidderdales on account of any awe of them personally.  It might be that she should acknowledge herself to be obliged to obey her father, though she was drifting away even from the sense of that obligation.  Had her mind been as it was now when Lord Nidderdale first...