If thoughts of him had kept her waiting through years, he would justify those thoughts by all the means in his power.

Casting about with a lover's ingenuity for an explanation of her tantalizing allurement, yet elusiveness, it occurred to him that she was unwilling to yield readily and easily, from very fear that he might surmise the cause of her freedom--that she had given him her love before it had been asked.
Therefore, it was not impossible that she now proposed for him a somewhat thorny probation as an open suitor.

She would not appear to be easily won, and perhaps she thought that, since this was to be the last wooing she could enjoy, she would make the most of it.

He also resolved to make the most of this phase of life, and to enjoy to the utmost all of her shy witchery, her airy, hovering nearness to the thought uppermost in his mind, as if she were both fascinated by it and afraid.

He little dreamed that her feminine grace and _finesse_ were but the practical carrying out of her father's suggestion, to "keep him well in hand." Madge felt herself neglected and partially forgotten.