She was intensely susceptible to personal influence--his bigness, his simplicity, his strength and daring, and the feeling that he was quite capable of mastering her, not only by brute force--which always appeals to a certain type of woman--but by power of will, by a tenacity of passion which she recognised even through the shy reserve with which McKeith tried to cloak his adoration.

For she was goddess to him, as well as lady-love--and that she realised plainly.

A look from her would make him go white and his large hands tremble; an unexpected grace from her would fill him with reverent ecstasy.
The thing happened one soft moonlit evening after dinner at Government House, when she had strolled out alone to a secluded part of the terrace, and he had followed her after the men left the dining-room.
She was in a mood of tempestuous raging against her ordained lot.
Letters had come from England that day which had irritated her and made her wonder how she could endure any longer her galling state of dependence.

Eliza Countess of Gaverick had sent her a meagre cheque, accompanied by a scathing rebuke of her extravagance.

Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after.