It was very painful, when you had made it quite dear to a
young man that you were determined not to marry him, however much he
might wish it, that he would still continue to pay you marked
attentions; besides, why didn't he always show the same attentions, if
he meant them sincerely, instead of being so strange as Mr Godfrey
Cass was, sometimes behaving as if he didn't want to speak to her, and
taking no notice of her for weeks and weeks, and then, all of a
sudden, almost making love again? Moreover, it was quite plain he
had no real love for her, else he would not let people have that to
say of him which they did say. Did he suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter
was to be won by any man, squire or no squire, who led a bad life?
That was not what she had been used to see in her own father, who
was the soberest and best man in that country-side, only a little
hot and hasty now and then, if things were not done to the minute.
All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy's mind, in their
habitual succession, in the moments between her first sight of Mr
Godfrey Cass standing at the door and her own arrival there.
Happily, the Squire came out too, and gave a loud greeting to the
father, so that, somehow, under cover of this noise, she seemed to
find concealment for her confusion and neglect of any suitably
formal behaviour, while she was being lifted from the pillion by
strong arms, which seemed to find her ridiculously small and light.
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