altogether beyond her own intention, but which--for just how
long? should she ever really know for just how long?--she could
do nothing to break. She was in the smaller drawing-room, in
which she always "sat," and she had, by calculation, dressed for
dinner on finally coming in. It was a wonder how many things she
had calculated in respect to this small incident--a matter for
the importance of which she had so quite indefinite a measure. He
would be late--he would be very late; that was the one certainty
that seemed to look her in the face. There was still also the
possibility that if he drove with Charlotte straight to Eaton
Square he might think it best to remain there even on learning
she had come away. She had left no message for him on any such
chance; this was another of her small shades of decision, though
the effect of it might be to keep him still longer absent. He
might suppose she would already have dined; he might stay, with
all he would have to tell, just on purpose to be nice to her
father. She had known him to stretch the point, to these
beautiful ends, far beyond that; he had more than once stretched
it to the sacrifice of the opportunity of dressing.

If she herself had now avoided any such sacrifice, and had made
herself, during the time at her disposal, quite inordinately
fresh and quite positively smart, this had probably added, while
she waited and waited, to that very tension of spirit in which
she was afterwards to find the image of her having crouched. She
did her best, quite intensely, by herself, to banish any such
appearance; she couldn't help it if she couldn't read her pale
novel--ah, that, par exemple, was beyond her! but she could at
least sit by the lamp with the book, sit there with her newest
frock, worn for the first time, sticking out, all round her,