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was she, to look after accounts and farms? and yet here she is, taking everything on. He'll grow more and more dependent upon her, and you'll see!--I believe he's been inclined for some time to marry again. He wants somebody to look after Pamela, and set him free for his hobbies. He'll very soon find out that this woman fills the part, and that, if he marries her, he'll get a classical secretary besides.' Mrs. Strang's voice--a deep husky voice--interposed. 'Miss Bremerton's not a woman to be married against her will, that you may be sure of, Alice.' 'No, but, my dear,' said the other impatiently, 'every woman over thirty wants a home--and a husband. She'd get that here anyway, however bad father's affairs may be. And, of course, a _position_.' The voices passed on out of hearing. Elizabeth remained transfixed. Then with a contemptuous shake of the head, and a bright colour, she returned to her work. But now, as she sat meditating on the hill-side, this absurd conversation recurred to her. Absurd, and not absurd! 'Most women of my sort can do what they have a mind to do,' she thought to herself, with perfect _sang-froid_. 'If I thought it worth while to marry this elderly lunatic--he's an interesting lunatic, though!--I suppose I could do it. But it isn't worth while--not the least. I've done with being a woman! What interests me is the bit of _work_--national work! Men find that kind of thing enough--a great many of them. I mean to find it enough. A fig for marrying!' All the same, as she returned to her schemes both for regenerating the estate and managing the Squire--schemes which were beginning to fascinate her, both by their difficulty and their scale--she found her thoughts oddly interfered with, first by recollections of the past--bitter, ineffaceable memories--and then by reflections on the recent course of her relations with the Squire. He had greeted her that morning without a single reference to the incidents of the night before, had seemed in excellent spirits, and before going up to town had given her in twenty minutes, _a propos_ of some difficulty in her work, one of the most brilliant lectures on certain points of Homeric archaeology she had ever heard--and she was a connoisseur in lectures. Intellectually, as a scholar, she both admired and looked upon him--with reverence, even with enthusiasm. She was eager for his praise, distressed by his censure. Practically and morally, patrioti
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