He wanted Nan, the same Nan with whom he had fallen in love--the inconsequent feminine thing of elusive frocks and absurd, delicious faults and weaknesses--rather than a Nan moulded into shape by Lady Gertrude's iron hand.

An intense resentment of his mother's interference had been gradually growing up within him.
He would do all the moulding that was required, after matrimony! Not that he put all this to himself in so many words.

But a sense of revolt, an overwhelming jealousy of everyone who made any claim at all on Nan--jealousy even of that merry Bohemian life of hers in which he had had no share--had been slowly gathering within him until it was almost more than he could endure.

Isobel's taunts at dinner had half maddened him.

Whether he were Philistine or not, Nan had promised to marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that promise were fulfilled.
And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness, felt as though the door of the cage were slowly closing upon her..