She had told herself that when she had been married a few years she would be braver.
And now her gladness was so devout that it was pure rejoicing.

How could she have been calm, how could she have been conversational, while through her whole being there surged but one thought.

She was sure that while she talked to people she would have been guilty of looking as if she was thinking of something not in the least connected with themselves.
If she had been less romantically sentimental in her desire to avoid all semblance of burdening her husband she would have ordered him home at once, and demanded as a right the protection of his dignity and presence.

If she had been less humble she would have felt the importance of her position and the gravity of the claims it gave her to his consideration, instead of being lost in prayerful gratitude to heaven.
She had been rather stupidly mistaken in not making a confidante of Lady Maria Bayne, but she had been, in her big girl shyness, entirely like herself.

In some remote part of her nature she had shrunk from a certain look of delighted amusement which she had known would have betrayed itself, despite her ladyship's good intentions, in the eyes assisted by the smart gold lorgnette.