It would be so distressing for you (I will say nothing of myself) if your friends closed their doors on me.

They might say I was a designing girl, who had taken advantage of your good opinion to raise herself in the world.

Lady Lydiard warned me long since not to be ambitious about myself and not to forget my station in life, because she treated me like her adopted daughter.

Indeed--indeed, I can't tell you how I feel your goodness, and the compliment--the very great compliment, you pay me! My heart is free, and if I followed my own inclinations--" She checked herself, conscious that she was on the brink of saying too much.

"Will you give me a few days," she pleaded, "to try if I can think composedly of all this?
I am only a girl, and I feel quite dazzled by the prospect that you set before me." Hardyman seized on those words as offering all the encouragement that he desired to his suit.
"Have your own way in this thing and in everything!" he said, with an unaccustomed fervor of language and manner.