When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit--of what one might like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk.

She herself was a character--she couldn't help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely with moral images--things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul.

Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation--an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow.

He appeared to demand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do.

What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived and moved.