But Lady Lucy had long made him
understand that to marry according to her wishes would mean
emancipation: a much larger income in the present, and the final
settlement of her will in his favor. It was amazing how she had taken to
Diana! Diana had only to accept him, and his future was secured.
But though thoughts of this kind passed in tumultuous procession through
the grooves of consciousness, they were soon expelled by others. Marsham
was no mere interested schemer. Diana should help him to his career; but
above all and before all she was the adorable brown-eyed creature, whose
looks had just been shining upon him, whose soft hand had just been
lingering in his! As he stood alone and spellbound in the dark, yielding
himself to the surging waves of feeling which broke over his mind, the
thought, the dream, of holding Diana Mallory in his arms--of her head
against his breast--came upon him with a sudden and stinging delight.
Yet the delight was under control--the control of a keen and practical
intelligence. There rose in him a sharp sense of the unfathomed depths
and possibilities in such a nature as Diana's. Once or twice that
evening, through all her sweet forthcomingness, when he had forced the
note a little, she had looked at him in sudden surprise or shrinking.
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