The Victory by Molly Elliot Seawell

It was broad daylight before the entire household at Harrowby was asleep, but Angela, in the great four-posted bed with curtains and valance, had fallen asleep -- young, healthy being that she was -- the instant her head touched the pillow. The day came dull and quiet, and no light penetrated the closed shutters and drawn curtains of the large room in which Angela slept. It was twelve o'clock before she opened her eyes and then closed them again. She felt a delicious sense of languor after her hours of dancing and gay excitement, and the large, soft bed invited continued repose. She could not, however, go to sleep again. Wandering thoughts of what had happened the night before stole upon her, and then all at once Neville's image, his looks, the pressure of his hand, so different from anything she had ever known, flashed upon her. She tried to put the thought away and, closing her eyes resolutely, lay still as a statue with that determination to go to sleep which always defeats its object. Presently, she sighed and turned restlessly; there was no more sweet repose for her, she had come face to face with that insistent passion which questions and demands an answer.

For the first time in her life the thought of meeting Neville made her feel shy. She loved him, oh, yes! Better than Richard, better than Archie! Neville had always been her champion who stood between her and disappointment, who warded off justice, who always approved of her, but Neville as a lover, as a husband -- for Angela's vivid mind traveled quickly -- ah! that was different. If she married Neville it would be like the continuation of a story of which she already knew the best part. She yearned for life, movement, knowledge, a view of the great outside world, which to her in imagination appeared far more fascinating than any world could be, and yet on the threshold she was to be handed back to settle in the same groove, to see the same faces, do the same things as she had done all her life. She loved Harrowby with all her soul, but longed to try her wings in flight. It seemed as if the great book of life lay open before her, but she could not be permitted to read any part which she had not already read. Prince Charming, that other half of her heart and soul, that unknown being about whom it was so delicious to wonder, would never come to her.