He would put up with all her silly Jingoism--if only she would stay! But at this point the Squire suddenly pulled up short in his pacing and excitedly asked himself the question, which half the people about him were already beginning to ask.
'Why shouldn't I marry her ?' He stood transfixed--the colour rising in his thin cheeks.
Hitherto the notion, if it had ever knocked at the outer door of the brain, had been chased away with mockery.

And he had no sooner admitted it now than he drove it out again.

He was simply afraid of it--in terror lest any suspicion of it should reach Elizabeth.

Her loyalty, her single-mindedness, her freedom from the smallest taint of intrigue--he would have answered for them with all he possessed.
If, for a moment, she chose to think that he had misinterpreted her kindness, her services in any vile and vulgar way, why, he might lose her on the instant! Let him walk warily--do nothing at least to destroy the friend in her, before he grasped at anything more.
Besides, how could she put up with him?
'I am the dried husk of a man!' thought the Squire, with vehemence.

'I couldn't learn her ways now, nor she mine.