From the beginning, I think, it had never occurred to Mary to doubt
the result. There had never been with her even a suggestion of
possible failure, unless it was that evening in our room, when,
prompted by her startled modesty, she had said she could not bear for
us to see her in the trunk hose. Now that fruition seemed about to
crown her hopes she was happy to her heart's core; and when once to
herself wept for sheer joy. It is little wonder she was happy. She was
leaving behind no one whom she loved excepting Jane, and perhaps, me.
No father nor mother; only a sister whom she barely knew, and a
brother whose treatment of her had turned her heart against him. She
was also fleeing with the one man in all the world for her, and from a
marriage that was literally worse than death.
Brandon, on the other hand, had always had more desire than hope. The
many chances against success had forced upon him a haunting sense of
certain failure, which, one would think, should have left him now.
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