his noble heart. It was not doubt of her, but of himself, and fear that
his great passion made him blind; for he was the one man chivalrous
enough to remember how young she was, and to see the cruelty of the Fate
which had given her unmothered childhood into the hands of a coarse
rioter and debauchee, making her his plaything and his whim. And if in
her first hours of bloom she had been thrown with youthful manhood and
beauty, what more in the course of nature than that she should have
learned to love; and being separated from her young lover by their mutual
youthful faults of pride and passionateness of temper, what more natural
than, being free again, and he suing with all his soul, that her heart
should return to him, even though through a struggle with pride. In her
lord's lifetime he had not seen Oxon near her; and in those days when he
had so struggled with his own surging love, and striven to bear himself
nobly, he had kept away from her, knowing that his passion was too great
and strong for any man to always hold at bay and make no sign, because at
brief instants he trembled before the thought that in her eyes he had
seen that which would have sprung to answer the same self in him if she
had been a free woman. But now when, despite her coldness, which never
melted to John Oxon, she still turned pale and seemed to fall under a
restraint on his coming, a man of sufficient high dignity to be
splendidly modest where his own merit was concerned, might well feel that
for this there must be a reason, and it might be a grave one.

So though he would not give up his suit until he was sure that 'twas
either useless or unfair, he did not press it as he would have done, but
saw his lady when he could, and watched with all the tenderness of
passion her lovely face and eyes. But one short town season passed
before he won his prize; but to poor Anne it seemed that in its passing
she lived years.