This brought her down to bed-rock again. Should she carry out the Plan, and make Tony hers in the end—which he vowed was very near?
There were quite a lot of earls; but none like Tony. She'd had, and would have, other chances. But not to touch Tony. There wasn't anything to touch Tony! And with all that money he'd talked about, he'd be a multi-millionaire. The whole world would be hers as his wife. Yet—there was "many a slip 'twixt cup and lip." Just supposing—oh well, she wouldn't think of it any more. It was maddening, agonising. She'd go to sleep and decide—actually decide—in the morning!
Marise flung herself down desperately, and burying her hot head in the cool pillows, she forced herself not to think.
When she waked, it was with the sensation that something hateful had happened or was going to happen.
What was it? Oh!...
The girl remembered the horrid thing, and how she had decided to keep free and punish Tony. Or had she quite decided? Hadn't she put off deciding?
How dull as lead it would be to give up this tremendous adventure to which she'd impulsively pledged—almost pledged!—herself! It might be a shocking and repulsive thing to do if some people did it, but it wouldn't, of course, be so with her.
Lots of people had said that "Dolores" was a coarse, unpleasant part when Elsa Fortescue had played it, but no one had said such a word when she had taken it over. On the contrary!
As this thought passed through her badly aching head, Marise dimly realised that marriage with Major Garth—accepting him as a dummy husband, having to fight him, perhaps; "seeing what he would do," whether he would try the old Claude Melnotte or Petruchio stuff, or whether he'd work up new business of his own—would be quite the most exacting emotional part for which she'd ever been cast.