But by the time she had nearly made up her mind it was the hour for luncheon, and little Nellie's appetite was exigent.
By the time lunch was over her determination had changed.

She had reflected that the vicar would think her morbid, that, with his usual good sense, he would say there was no necessity for telling the squire anything; indeed, that to do so would be undignified.

If the squire were indeed going to lead the life of a recluse as he proposed doing, he was not really a man to cause her any apprehension.

If he had travelled about the world for forty years, without having his heart disturbed by any of the women he must have met in that time, he was certainly not the kind of man, when once he had determined to settle in his home, to fall in love with the first pretty woman he met.

It was absurd; there was no likelihood of it; it was her own miserable vanity, she told herself, which made the thing seem probable, and she would not think any more about it.