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This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long
summer days of that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of
reasonings, arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be
added, by inclinations of her own at times. No woman is without
aspirations, which may be innocent enough within certain limits;
and Grace had been so trained socially, and educated
intellectually, as to see clearly enough a pleasure in the
position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers. His material
standing of itself, either present or future, had little in it to
give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and
cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had
their charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying
well which caused her to float with the current, and to yield to
the immense influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever
she shared his society.
Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not
she loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to
do so in time.


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