The lead she had given him made the difference, and he felt it as really a lift on finding an honest and natural word rise, by its license, to his lips.
Nothing surely could be, for both of them, more in the note of a high bravery.

"I've been thinking it all the while so probable, you know, that you would have seen your way to marrying." She looked at him an instant, and, just for these seconds, he feared for what he might have spoiled.

"To marrying whom ?" "Why, some good, kind, clever, rich American." Again his security hung in the balance--then she was, as he felt, admirable.
"I tried everyone I came across.

I did my best.

I showed I had come, quite publicly, FOR that.