To have a day's walk with him among the mountains would be practically deciding.

But for what?
If she rejected his proposal of a free union, was he prepared to marry her in legal form?
Yes; she had enough power over him for that.
But how would it affect his thought of her?
Constraining him to legal marriage, would she not lower herself in his estimation, and make the endurance of his love less probable?
Barfoot was not a man to accept with genuine satisfaction even the appearance of bondage, and more likely than not his love of her depended upon the belief that in her he had found a woman capable of regarding life from his own point of view--a woman who, when she once, loved, would be scornful of the formalities clung to by feeble minds.

He would yield to her if she demanded forms, but afterwards--when passion had subsided--.
A week had been none too long to ponder these considerations by themselves; but they were complicated with doubts of a more disturbing nature.

Her mind could not free itself from the thought of Monica.

That Mrs.Widdowson was not always truthful with her husband she had absolute proof; whether that supported her fear of an intimacy between Monica and Everard she was unable to determine.