be the case that no one would
dare to impute disgrace to her?

And yet she did not wordnetdesire it. Even yet, thinking of all this as she
did think of it, according to the truth of the argument which he
himself put before her, she would still have preferred that it should
not be so. If she only knew with what words to tell him so;--to tell
him so and yet give no wordnetanger! For herself, she would have married
him willingly. Why should she not? Nay, she could and would have
loved him, and been to him a wife, such as he could have found in no
other woman. But she said within her  that she owed him kindness
and --that she owed them all kindness, and that it would
be bad to repay them in such a way as this. She also thought of Sir
Peregrine's gray hairs, and of his proud standing in the county, and
the  in which men held him. Would it be well in her to drag
him down in his last days from the noble pedestal on which he stood,
and repay him thus for all that he was doing for her?

"Well," said he, stroking her soft hair with his hands--the hair
which appeared in