Never once, during all the hours they had passed together, had he let that strong passion of his break loose, though once or twice she thought she had heard it leap against the bars which prisoned it--the hot, imperious desire to which one day she must submit unmurmuringly.
Drilled by Kitty, he had been very undemanding up till now.

Often he had left her with only a kindly pressure of the hand or a light kiss on her forehead, and she had been grateful to him.

Grateful, too, that she had been spared a disagreeable scene with his mother.

Lady Gertrude had met her without censure, even with a certain limited cordiality, and accordingly Nan, whose conscience was over-sensitive just now, had reproached herself the more severely for her treatment of her future mother-in-law.
Perhaps she would have felt rather less self-reproachful if she had known the long hours of persuasion and argument by which Roger had at last prevailed upon his mother to refrain from pouring out the vials of her wrath on Nan's devoted head.

Only fear lest she might alienate the girl so completely that Roger would lose the wife he wanted had induced her to yield.