After all, there was piquancy in the situation; for to most men, love sought and hardly won is far sweeter than love freely given.
Yet of all the women whom he had known, Charlotte Sandal was the least approachable.

She was fertile in preventing an opportunity; and if the opportunity came, she was equally fertile in spoiling it.

But Julius had patience; and patience is the art and secret of hoping.

A woman cannot always be on guard, and he believed in not losing heart, and in waiting.
Sooner or later, the happy moment when success would be possible was certain to arrive.
One day in the early part of September, the squire asked his wife for all the house-servants she could spare.

"A few more hands will bring home the harvest to-night," he said; "and it would be a great thing to get it in without a drop of rain." So the men and maids went off to the wheat-fields, as if they were going to a frolic; and there was a happy sense of freedom, with the picnicky dinner, and the general air of things being left to themselves about the house.