Then she began to wonder if all her previous ideas--all her previous aspirations--were mistaken.

She began to wonder if this was the reality of love--this conviction that there was nothing in the whole world that she would welcome with more enthusiasm than an announcement on the part of her father that he was going on a voyage to Australia, and that he meant to take her with him.
And then---- Well, then she threw herself upon her bed and wept for an hour one evening, and for two hours (at intervals) another evening; and then looked up the old published speeches made by a certain cabinet minister in his irresponsible days, on a question which he had recently introduced.

Her father was bitterly opposed to the most recent views of the minister, and was particularly anxious to confront him with his own phrases of thirty years back.

She spent four hours copying out the words which were now meant by Mr.Ayrton to confound the utterer..