Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:
“Well, of course, you’ll do as you think best. There’s a great risk in going so far—a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected.”
“I don’t mind being unprotected,” said Alvina perversely.
“Because you don’t understand what it means,” said her father.
He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the others.
“Personally,” said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, “I don’t care for him. But every one has their own taste.”
Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting herself be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle into the well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had frightened her.
Miss Frost now took a definite line.
“I feel you don’t love him, dear. I’m almost sure you don’t. So now you have to choose. Your mother dreads your going—she dreads it. I am certain you would never see her again. She says she can’t bear it—she can’t bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It makes her shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will have to choose, dear. You will have to choose for the best.”
Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to believe that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not love him. But out of a certain perversity, she wanted to go.