He was not in the least her ideal.

Neither did she wish to remain unmarried, neither did she wish to part with her grave, distinguished suitor who was an ornament to herself.

And she was distinctly averse to living any longer in the paternal home, lost in a remote crease in a Hampshire down.

Poor women have only too frequently to deal with these complicated situations, with which blundering, egotistic male minds are seldom in perfect sympathy.
Fay had never willingly relinquished any of the men who had cared for her, and some had cared much.

These last had as a rule torn themselves away from her, leaving hearts, or other fragments of themselves, behind, and were not to be cajoled back again, even by one of her little gilt-edged notes.