He certainly could not be justified in regarding himself as free because she had told him that she would give him time to think of it.

Of course he was engaged to marry her.

When a man has been successful in his wooing he is supposed to be happy.

He asked himself whether he was proud of the result of this intimacy.

She had told him,--she herself,--that she had 'caught him', meaning thereby that he had been taken as a rabbit with a snare or a fish with a baited hook.