There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her.

She had been haunted at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and had wondered--a consideration she had never paid in equal degree to any one else--whether he would like what she did.

The difficulty was that more than any man she had ever known, more than poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his lordship the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood expressed for her an energy--and she had already felt it as a power that was of his very nature.

It was in no degree a matter of his "advantages"-- it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his clear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window.

She might like it or not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force: even in one's usual contact with him one had to reckon with that.