A smile came across her face as she sat
looking at the fire, thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose
love was worth possessing. She hardly remembered whether or no she
had refused him or accepted him. She hardly asked herself what she
would do. As to all that it was necessary that she should have many
thoughts, but the necessity did not press upon her quite immediately.
For the present, at any rate, she might sit and triumph;--and thus
triumphant she sat there till the old nurse came in and told her that
her mother was waiting for her below.
CHAPTER XL
Preparations for the Wedding
The fourteenth of February was finally settled as the day on which
Mr Crosbie was to be made the happiest of men. A later day had been
at first named, the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth having been
suggested as an improvement over the first week in March; but Lady
Amelia had been frightened by Crosbie's behaviour on that Sunday
evening, and had made the countess understand that there should be no
unnecessary delay. "He doesn't scruple at that kind of thing," Lady
Amelia had said in one of her letters, showing perhaps less trust in
the potency of her own rank than might have been expected from her.
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