Self had been her ruin; she had never been able to get away from self, no, not for a single moment of her life. All her love stories had been ruined and disfigured by self-assertion, not a great unconscious self, in other words an instinct, but an extremely conscious, irritable, mean, and unworthy self. She knew it all, she was not deceived. She could no more cheat herself than she could change herself; that wretched self was as present in her at this moment as it had ever been; she was as much a slave to herself as she had ever been, and knowledge of her fault helped her nothing in its correction. She could not change herself, she would have to bear the burden of herself to the end. Even now, when she ought to be absorbed in grief for her brother's death she was thinking of herself, of how she should live, for live she must; she did not know why, she did not know how. She had tried everything and failed, and marriage stared her in the face as the only solution of the difficulty of her life. She had promised Alfred Stanby to marry him that afternoon. Should she keep that promise? Could she keep that promise? ... A thought fell into her mind. Did Alfred know of her brother's death when he proposed to her? She had heard something about a cigar; Harold had gone to the house to fetch one. A few minutes after she had seen Alfred walking towards the house. Had he gone to the smoking-room... found Harold dead on the sofa and come and proposed to her? 'It is my money and not myself that has tempted him back,' she cried, and she looked down the long line of her lovers. She had given her money to M. Delacour.... But no, he had loved her whatever the others might think, she knew that was so.... She could have had the Comte de la Ferriere, and how many others?--rich men, too--men to whom money was no consideration. But she had come back to Sutton to be married for her money; and to whom? an old, discarded lover. XXII. As she tossed to and fro, the recollections of the day turned in her brain, ticking loudly; and she could see each event as distinctly as the figures on the dial of a great clock. She saw the girls playing tennis, and Alfred walking towards the house.... She did not see him enter the house, it is true; but she had met him coming from the house. They had walked to the end of the garden, and had sat down under the elms not very far from the spot where she had rejected him five years before. His hesitations had amused her. At last he had taken her hand and had asked her to marry him. There had been something strange in his manner. Something had struck her at the time, but the impression passed in the pride of seeing him fall a prey to her enchantment.