The minutes passed in a kind of trance of memory.

Oh, that soft, childlike movement to him, after his speech about her father! that heavenly yielding and self-forgetfulness which shone in her every look and movement as she stood balancing on the stepping-stones! If after all she should prove cruel to him, would he not have a legitimate grievance, a heavy charge to fling against her maiden gentleness?
He trampled on the notion.

Let her do with him as she would, she would be his saint always, unquestioned, unarraigned.
But with such a memory in his mind it was impossible that any man, least of all a man of Elsmere's temperament, could be very hopeless.

Oh, yes, he had been rash, foolhardy.

Do such divine creatures stoop to mortal men as easily as he had dreamt?
He recognizes all the difficulties, he enters into the force of all the ties that bind her--or imagines that he does.