'
'Perhaps I ought to have reasoned thus,' he replied; 'but I could not. I
could not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired of your
character. I could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed, buried,
lost in those earlier feelings which I had been smarting under year after
year. I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who had given me
up, who had been influenced by anyone rather than by me. I saw you with
the very person who had guided you in that year of misery. I had no
reason to believe her of less authority now. The force of habit was to
be added.'
'I should have thought,' said Anne, 'that my manner to yourself might
have spared you much or all of this.'
'No, no! Your manner might be only the ease which your engagement to
another man would give. I left you in this belief; and yet--I was
determined to see you again. My spirits rallied with the morning, and I
felt that I had still a motive for remaining here. The Admiral's news,
indeed, was a revulsion; since that moment I have been divided what to
do, and had it been confirmed, this would have been my last day in Bath.
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