to say that he talked
common sense to women. He was an example of the consequence!

Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby's
wrath at Clara's exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposal
of a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish
his loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet
consciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all over the
house, from Clara and De Craye to Laetitia and young Crossjay, down to
Barclay the maid. His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a
spider to feel when plucked from his own web and set in the centre of
another's. Laetitia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was on
her eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of the
circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy,
it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her--of the
paternal pat-back order of pity. She adored him, by decree of Venus;
and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in
adoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head
induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring of
Laetitia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked that impulse
also, and more sovereignly. For him to be pitied by Laetitia seemed an
upsetting of the scheme of Providence. Providence, otherwise the
discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him
the beacon, her the bird: she was really the last person to whom he
could unbosom. The idea of his being in a position that suggested his
doing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and it appalled him. There
appeared to be another Power. The same which had humiliated him once
was menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence, whose favourite
he had ever been. We must have a couple of Powers to account for
discomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence had
singled him for uncommon benefits: malignancy was at work to rob him of
them. And you think well of the world, do you!

Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker Power pointing the
knife at the quick of his pride. Still, he would have raised her
weeping: he would have stanched her wounds bleeding: he had an infinite
thirst for her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable
love. Or let her commit herself, and be cast off. Only she must commit
herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as we