Gerty instanced her generous impulses--her restlessness and discontent.

The fact that her life had never satisfied her proved that she was made for better things.

She might have married more than once--the conventional rich marriage which she had been taught to consider the sole end of existence--but when the opportunity came she had always shrunk from it.

Percy Gryce, for instance, had been in love with her--every one at Bellomont had supposed them to be engaged, and her dismissal of him was thought inexplicable.

This view of the Gryce incident chimed too well with Selden's mood not to be instantly adopted by him, with a flash of retrospective contempt for what had once seemed the obvious solution.