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take positive possession of her. The sentiment in which she
sought refuge after reading his letter was a critical view of
his having come abroad; for it was part of the influence he
had upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of
freedom. There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of
hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her. She
had been haunted at moments by the image, by the danger,
of his disapproval and had wondered—a consideration she
had never paid in equal degree to any one else—whether he
would like what she did. The difficulty was that more than
any man she had ever known, more than poor Lord War-
burton (she had begun now to give his lordship the benefit
of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood expressed for her an en-
ergy—and she had already felt it as a power—that was of his
very nature. It was in no degree a matter of his ‘advantages’it
was a matter of the spirit that sat in his clear-burning eyes
like some tireless watcher at a window. She might like it or
not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force:
even in one’s usual contact with him one had to reckon with
that. The idea of a diminished liberty was particularly dis-
agreeable to her at present, since she had just given a sort of
personal accent to her independence by looking so straight
at Lord Warburton’s big bribe and yet turning away from it.
Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had seemed to range him-
self on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she
knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might
evade him for a time, but that she must make terms with
him at lastterms which would be certain to be favourable to
himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of the things

160 The Portrait of a Lady