“Why shouldn’t we keep it up, as long, at least, as the Vacation lasts? After that, it is true, I’ll have to go back to work; but it is a long time before that, and I will go back with a light heart to do my best, to make it possible to carry you off one day and laugh at Sir Robert, for that is what it must come to, Lily. You may have objections, but you must learn to get over them. If he stands out and will not give in to us, we must just take it in our own hands. It must come to that. I would not hurry or press a thing so displeasing if other means will do. And in the meantime we’ll be very patient and try to get over your uncle by fair means. But if he is obstinate, dear, that’s what it will have to come to. No need to hurry you; we’re young enough. But you must prepare your mind for it, Lily, for that is what will have to come if he does not give way.” Lily clung to her lover’s arm in a bewilderment of pleasure which was yet confusion of thought, as if the world had suddenly turned upside down. This was her own sentiment, which Ronald had never shared: how in a moment had it become his, changing every thing, making the present delightful and the future all hope and light? Sir Robert’s fortune had, then, begun to appear to him what it had been to her, so secondary a matter! and Sir Robert himself only a relative worthy of consideration and deference, but not a tyrant obstructing all the developments of life. She could not say: “This is how I have felt all through,” for, indeed, it had never been possible to her to say to him: “Take me; let us live poorly, but together,” as she had always felt. Was it he who had felt this all through and not she at all? Lily was bewildered, her standing-ground seemed to have changed, the whole position was transformed. Surely it must have been she who held back, who wanted to delay and temporize, not the lover, to whom the bolder way was more natural. She did not seem to feel the ground beneath her, all had so twisted and changed. “That is what it must come to; you must prepare your mind for it, Lily.” Had that solid ground been cut from under her? was she walking upon air? Her head felt a little giddy and sick in the change of the world; yet what a change! all blessedness and happiness and consolation, with no trouble in it at all. “I have thought so sometimes myself,” she said in the great bewilderment of her mind.