Her consent once given, not a moment had
been lost. The business had been hurried on with the utmost eagerness by
the impetuous lover, who would give her as little opportunity as possible
of changing her mind, and who had obtained complete mastery of her will
from the moment in which she promised to be his wife.
She loved him with all the unselfish devotion of which her nature was
capable; and no thought of the years to come, or of what her future life
might be with this man, of whose character and circumstances she knew so
very little, ever troubled her. Having sacrificed her fidelity to Gilbert
Fenton, she held all other sacrifices light as air--never considered them
at all, in fact. When did a generous romantic girl of nineteen ever stop
to calculate the chances of the future, or fear to encounter poverty and
trouble with the man she loved? To Marian this man was henceforth all the
world. It was not that he was handsomer, or better, or in any obvious way
superior to Gilbert Fenton. It was only that he was just the one man able
to win her heart. That mysterious attraction which reason can never
reduce to rule, which knows no law of precedent or experience, reigned
here in full force. It is just possible that the desperate circumstances
of the attachment, the passionate pursuit of the lover, not to be checked
by any obstacle, may have had an influence upon the girl's mind.
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