The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there was in her--something cold and dry an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have called it--had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the article of possible husbands.

Few of the men she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience.
Deep in her soul--it was the deepest thing there--lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive.

Isabel's thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a little it ended in alarms.

It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist.

She was always planning out her development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress.