You might have lost self-possession--even _you_ might, you know!--and then it would have been serious." "Anyway"-- her voice was still uncertain--"I might have been disfigured--disfigured for life!" "I don't know why you should dwell upon it now it's done with," he declared, smiling.
"It would be strange, wouldn't it, if I took it quite for granted--all in the day's work ?" She held out her hand: "I am grateful--please." He bowed over it, laughing, again with that eighteenth-century air which might have become a Chevalier des Grieux.
"May I exact a reward ?" "Ask it." "Will you take me down with you to your village?
I know you are going.

I must walk on afterwards and catch a midday train to Widrington.

I have an appointment there at two o'clock.

But perhaps you will introduce me to one or two of your poor people first ?" Marcella assented, went upstairs, changed her dress, and put on her walking things, more than half inclined all the time to press her mother to go with them.

She was a little unstrung and tremulous, pursued by a feeling that she was somehow letting herself go, behaving disloyally and indecorously towards whom ?--towards Aldous?
But how, or why?
She did not know.