The girl had kept her word, lived up to the line of
conduct she had set herself; and Anna had failed in the same
attempt. She did not reproach herself with her failure; but
she would have been happier if there had been less
discrepancy between her words to Sophy Viner and the act
which had followed them. It irritated her obscurely that
the girl should have been so much surer of her power to
carry out her purpose...
Anna looked up and saw that Darrow's eyes were on the
newspaper. He seemed calm and secure, almost indifferent to
her presence. "Will it become a matter of course to him so
soon?" she wondered with a twinge of jealousy. She sat
motionless, her eyes fixed on him, trying to make him feel
the attraction of her gaze as she felt his. It surprised
and shamed her to detect a new element in her love for him:
a sort of suspicious tyrannical tenderness that seemed to
deprive it of all serenity. Finally he looked up, his smile
enveloped her, and she felt herself his in every fibre, his
so completely and inseparably that she saw the vanity of
imagining any other fate for herself.
To give herself a countenance she held out Owen's letter.
He took it and glanced down the page, his face grown grave.
She waited nervously till he looked up.
"That's a good plan; the best thing that could happen," he
said, a just perceptible shade of constraint in his tone.
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