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hostess to penetrate Walter's preoccupation with their granddaughter. Lord Ian and Lady Alinor had been very polite. They had patiently repeated questions or remarks he had not heard while his eyes or thoughts were fixed on his lodestar, and they had never laughed at himat least, not in his presencealthough sometimes there had been a certain rigidity in their expressions or a rather choked quality in their voices. Of course, it was not until after Walter had realized he was head over heels in love and had promptly removed himself from Roselynde that he also recognized the symptoms of Ian's and Alinor's amusement and associated it with his premature courtship of Sybelle. |
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The immediate retreat was necessary because Walter could not, in honor, court Sybelle before he had her father's permission to do so, even if her grandparents' attitude had given tacit permission. Although Walter knew he had not said a word or made a gesture that overtly indicated or invited love, he was neither such a knave nor such a fool as to believe that overt words or actions were necessary. All he could do was leave Roselynde in haste and hope the aura of longing he now realized he must have been displaying had not affected Sybelle. It would be a quite dreadful crime to engage a girl's affections and then discover that her father did not approve the match. |
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Walter blamed himself bitterly for carelessness and stupidity. He could not imagine why it had taken him so long to realize how deeply he was entangled, or that he might be entangling Sybelle. It was ridiculous that he had not recognized what he felt to be love, but after he had mentally subtracted his violent sexual craving from his feelings, it seemed to him that only a pleasant friendliness remained. True, his loins tightened and heated every time he laid eyes on Sybelle, or, for that matter, every time he thought of her, but that had happened to him with other women. |
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Certainly, he felt none of the symptoms celebrated so widely in songs and poems and romantic tales. Not once had he felt faint or unable to speak or felt himself in the presence of a being infinitely above him. He enjoyed Sybelle's company enormously; she was the most rational girl he had ever met and was most eager to talk about sensible things, like land management and cattle breeding. And it was true that he |
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