You're too well-born and you've been too well educated for a habitant's wife--and the Cure or I can't marry you." He was not taken back to see her flush deeply, and it pleased him to see this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his mind a new interest.

He had come to that age when the mind is surprised to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things once hated are less acutely repulsive.

He saw her embarrassment.

He did not know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of marriage since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of thinking much on a man, had become a possibility, which, however, she had never confessed to herself.

Here she was faced by it now in the broad open day: a plain, hard statement, unrelieved by aught save the humour of the shrewd eyes bent upon her.
She did not answer him at once.