You mustn't come again this week to tempt me out.

I have promised Miss Howells to be industrious.
It will soon be four o'clock, and then I will come." And her uncle had perforce to be content, for at Nantmyny there was no doubt that Gwenda "ruled the roost." Somehow she emerged from the stage of girlhood with a fair amount of knowledge, although her mother's sisters, the two Miss Gwynnes of Pentre, were much dissatisfied with her want of what they called "polish." "She'll never make a good match," they were wont to say, "never! That plain outspokenness is all very well in a man, or even in an old woman, but it's very unbecoming in a girl, and I'm sure it will ruin her prospects." And on the subject of her "prospects" they were accustomed to dilate so continually and so earnestly that Gwenda had a shrinking dislike to the word, as well as to the subject to which it referred.
"We must really speak to her again, Maria, for of course George may marry some day, and then what would become of her prospects ?" And another lecture was prepared for Gwenda.
A few days after the accident which made her a prisoner, lying on the sofa in the morning-room she had fallen into a deep reverie, which had caused quite a pucker between her eyebrows.

Being naturally a romantic, sentimental girl, she mentally resented the sordid necessity so continually urged by her aunts of making a "good match." It was in Gwenda to cast all their prudent manoeuvres to the winds, and to follow the bent of her own inclinations; but it was in her also to immolate herself entirely upon the altar of an imagined duty.

She chafed somewhat at the want of freedom in her surroundings, her aunts declaring it was incumbent upon her to please her uncle by marrying well, and as soon as possible.

And all these restrictions galled the young lady, in whom the romantic dreams of the natural woman were calling loudly for fulfilment.