But the idea, uttered as her friend
had uttered it, had a new solemnity, and the effect of that quick,
violent colloquy was to make her nervous and impatient, as if she had
had a sudden glimpse of futurity. That was rather awful, even if it
represented the fate one would like.
When the two young men from the College pressed their petition, she
asked, with a laugh that surprised them, whether they wished to "mock
and muddle" her. They went away, assenting to Mrs. Tarrant's last
remark: "I am afraid you'll feel that you don't quite understand us
yet." Matthias Pardon remained; her father and mother, expressing their
perfect confidence that he would excuse them, went to bed and left him
sitting there. He stayed a good while longer, nearly an hour, and said
things that made Verena think that _he_, perhaps, would like to marry
her. But while she listened to him, more abstractedly than her custom
was, she remarked to herself that there could be no difficulty in
promising Olive so far as he was concerned. He was very pleasant, and he
knew an immense deal about everything, or, rather, about every one, and
he would take her right into the midst of life. But she didn't wish to
marry him, all the same, and after he had gone she reflected that, once
she came to think of it, she didn't want to marry any one.
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