Her mind was relieved of two anxieties; she felt sure that the girls had not taken ill what she told them, and there was no longer the least doubt concerning the authorship of that review in The Current.
She could confess to herself now that the assurance from Jasper's lips was not superfluous.

He might have weighed profit against other considerations, and have written in that way of her father; she had not felt that absolute confidence which defies every argument from human frailty.

And now she asked herself if faith of that unassailable kind is ever possible; is it not only the poet's dream, the far ideal?
Marian often went thus far in her speculation.

Her candour was allied with clear insight into the possibilities of falsehood; she was not readily the victim of illusion; thinking much, and speaking little, she had not come to her twenty-third year without perceiving what a distance lay between a girl's dream of life as it might be and life as it is.

Had she invariably disclosed her thoughts, she would have earned the repute of a very sceptical and slightly cynical person.
But with what rapturous tumult of the heart she could abandon herself to a belief in human virtues when their suggestion seemed to promise her a future of happiness! Alone in her room she sat down only to think of Jasper Milvain, and extract from the memory of his words, his looks, new sustenance for her hungry heart.