That was all--that must, that should be all. She thought vigorously
of the intellectual comradeships of history--beginning with Michael
Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. They were not certainly quite on all
fours with her own situation--but give modern life and the new woman
time!
Suppose, then, these anxieties set at rest, and that immediately,
within twenty-four hours, or a week, the Squire were to ask her to
marry him and were ready to understand the matter as she did--what
else stood in the way?
Then, slowly, in the darkness of the room, there rose before her the
young figures of the twins, with their arms round each other's
necks, as she had often seen them--Desmond and Pamela. And they
looked at her with hostile eyes!
'Cuckoo!--intriguer!--we don't want you!--we won't accept you!'
But after all, as Elizabeth reflected not without a natural
exasperation, she was _not_--consciously--a cuckoo; she was not an
intriguer; there was nothing of the Becky Sharp about her at all; it
would have been so very much simpler if there had been! To swallow
the Squire and Mannering at one gulp, to turn out the twins, to put
Mrs.
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