She told herself continually that she did not want to marry him or anyone, that she hated the very idea of marriage.
But her manner to Wentworth seemed hardly to be the outward reflection of these inward communings.

And why did she conceal from Magdalen her now constant meetings with him?
Wentworth had by this time tested and found correct all his intimate knowledge of Woman, that knowledge which at first had not seemed to work out quite smoothly.
Nothing could be more flattering, more essentially womanly than Fay's demeanour to him had become since he had set her mind at rest as to his intentions on that idyllic afternoon after the storm.

(How he had set her mind at rest on that occasion he knew best.) It seemed this exquisite nature only needed the sunshine of his unspoken assurance to respond with delighted tenderness to his refined, his cultured advances.
He was already beginning to write imaginary letters to his friends, on the theme of his engagement: semi-humourous academic effusions as to how he, who had so long remained immune, had succumbed at last to feminine charm; how he, the determined celibate--Wentworth always called himself a celibate--had been taken captive after all.

To judge by the letters which Wentworth conned over in his after-dinner mind, and especially one to Grenfell, the conclusion was irresistible to the meanest intellect that he had long waged a frightful struggle with the opposite sex to have remained a bachelor--a celibate, I mean--so long.
We have all different ways of enjoying ourselves.

In the composition of these imaginary letters Wentworth tasted joy.
* * * * * In these days Fay's boxes of primroses jostled each other in the postman's cart, on their way to cheer patients on their beds of pain in London hospitals.
Fay read the hurried, grateful notes of busy matrons, over and over again.