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delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of
pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had
been pride that interfered with her accepting Lord Warbur-
ton 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 sym-
pathy. 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 iteven
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 go-
ing rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to
her friend, really frightened at herself.

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