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ances of the plain, were unnaturally clear; and as the sunshine, the high air, the freshly moving wind, played upon Hester, her irritation passed away in a sensuous delight.
"Why should I let them worry me? I won't! I am here! I am alive! I am only eighteen! I am going to manage my life for myself--and get out of this coil. Now let me think!"
She slid downward among the heather, her face propped on her hands. Close beneath her eyes was an exquisite tuft of pink bell-heather intergrown with bunchberries. And while a whole vague series of thoughts and memories passed through her mind she was still vividly conscious of the pink bells, the small bright leaves. Sensation in her was exceptionally keen, whether for pleasure or pain. She knew it and had often coolly asked herself whether it meant that she would wear out--life and brain--quicker than other people--burn faster to the socket. So much the better if it did.
What was it she really wanted?--what did she mean to do? Proudly, she refused to admit any other will in the matter. The thought of Meynell, indeed, touched some very sore and bitter chords in her mind, but it did not melt her. She knew very well that she had nothing to blame her guardian for; that year after year from her childhood up she had repelled and resisted him, that her whole relation to him had been one of stubbornness and caprice. Well, there were reasons for it; she was not going to repent or change.
Of late his conduct with regard to Stephen's proposal had stirred in her a kind of rage. It was not that she imagined herself in love with Stephen; but she had chosen to be engaged to him; and that any one should affect to control her in such a matter, should definitely and decidedly cross her will, was intolerable to her wild pride. If Stephen had rebelled with her, she might have fallen fiercely in love with him--for a month. But he had submitted--though it was tolerably plain what it had cost him; and all her careless liking for him, the fruit of years of very poo