fa, eh? don't rise for me, then. Rather done up, eh? Ah! I was
afraid you were for getting on too fast. Bad economy in the end. You
will be glad to be rid of us: so I shall not come in. Take care of
yourself, I beg of you. Good-night."

In what a state of mind was Hope left! His plain-speaking motherly
friend little guessed what a storm she had raised in a spirit usually as
calm as a summer's morning. There was nothing to him so abhorrent as
giving pain; nothing so intolerable in idea as injuring any human being:
and he was now compelled to believe that through some conduct of his
own, some imprudence, in a case where imprudence is guilt, he had broken
up the peace of a woman whom, though he did not love, he respected and
warmly regarded! His mind was in too tumultuous a state for him to
attempt to settle with himself the degree of his culpability. He only
knew that he was abased in his own sense of deep injury towards a
fellow-creature. In the same breath came the destruction of his
hopes,--hopes, of which, till the moment, he had been scarcely
conscious,--with regard to the one on whom his thoughts had been really
fixed. He had pledged himself to act strictly according to his sense of
duty. His consolation, his refuge in every former trial of life, since
the days of childhood, had been in resolving to abide faithfully by the
decisions of duty. In this he had found freedom; in this he had met
strength and repose, so that no evil had been intolerable to him. But
what was his duty now? Amidst the contradictions of honour and
conscience in the present case, where should he find his accustomed
refuge? At one moment he saw clearly the obligation to devote himself
to her whose affections he had gained,--thoughtlessly and carelessly, it
is true, but to other eyes purposely. At the next moment, the sin of
marrying without love,--if not while loving another,--rose vividly
before him, and made him shrink from what, an instant before, seemed
clear duty. The only hope was in the possibility of mistake, which
might yet remain. The whole could not be mistake, about Hester, and
Enderby, and Margaret, and all Mrs Grey's convictions. Some of all
this must be true. The probability was that it was all true: and if
so,--he could almost repine that he had not died when his death was
expected. Then he should not have known of all this injury and woe;
then he should not have had to witness Margaret's love for another: