His was not a mind that took rational account of the differences between characters, yet he began to realise now that the girl who had made her own way, as this one had, was not the same as the girl he had imagined wandering helplessly among pathless hills, and dying feebly there.
She still looked at him as if demanding an answer to her request, looked at him curiously too, trying to estimate how ill he _was_.

He did not speak, and she, although she did not at all fathom his feeling, knew instinctively that some influence she had had over him was lessened.
"Of course you can spoil my life if you like, Mr.Bates, but I've come to ask you not.

Someone's told me there's a mine found on our clearin'-- well, when I took your aunt's gold pieces I meant to leave you the land for them.

I'm too proud to go back on that now, _far_ too proud; you can keep the money if you want to, or you can give me some of it if you _want_ to.

I'd like to be rich better than anything, but I'd rather be poor as a church mouse, and free to get on my own way, than have you to say what I ought to do every touch and turn, thinking I'd only be good and sensible so long as I did what you told me" (there was derision in her voice).