hypocrite, cannot do it by halves. From writing a short cold letter,
Aminta wrote a short warm one, or very friendly. Length she could avoid,
because she was unable to fill a page. It seemed that she could not
compose a friendly few lines without letting her sex be felt in them.
What she had put away from her, so as not to feel it herself, the
simulation of ever so small a bit of feeling brought prominently back;
and where she had made a cast for flowing independent simplicity, she
was feminine, ultra-feminine to her reading of it.

Better take the leap than be guilty of double-dealing even on paper!
The nature of the leap she did not examine.

Her keen apprehension of the price payable for his benevolent intentions
caught scent of them in the air. Those Ormont jewels shone as emblems of
a detested subjection, the penalty for being the beautiful woman rageing
men proclaimed. Was there no scheme of some other sort, and far less
agreeable, to make amends for Steignton? She was shrewd at divination;
she guessed her lord's design. Rather than meet Lady Charlotte, she
proposed to herself the 'leap' immediately; knowing it must be a leap in
the dark, hoping it might be into a swimmer's water. She had her own
pin-money income, and she loathed the chain of her title. So the leap
would at least be honourable, as it assuredly would be unregretted,
whatever ensued.

While Aminta's heart held on to this debate, and in her bed, in her boat,
across the golden valley meadows beside her peaceful little friend, she
gathered a gradual resolution without sight of agencies or consequences,
Lord Ormont was kept from her by the struggle to master his Charlotte a
second time--compared with which the first was insignificant. And this
time it was curious: he could not subdue her physique, as he did before;