Explore "The Amulet" by Mary Noailles Murfree on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The next day only it was that, George Mervyn being on duty as officer of the day, Arabella felt a dreary sort of freedom in being alone. A realization that this lassitude, yet sense of relief, was no good augury for her future oppressed her. She said to herself that doubtless when she should be married to him she would soon have less of his society. She knew few marriages in which the devotion was so constant as to grow wearisome; she thought it was because of the intensity of his affection that she felt it a drag. She declared with a sigh that she liked him -- she liked him well. She did not realize how much her pride had predisposed her to entertain his protestations, her aunt's artful goadings, her own ambitions, and her inherited disposition to persist, to press forward against resistance, to conquer.
She wanted to be out -- away, far from the scenes with which he was associated, apart from the thought of him. She wanted to regain her old identity -- to be herself -- to feel free.