ot till after he had viewed Margaret's case in every light, in which
apprehension could place it, that he dwelt upon what the suffering to
himself must be of seeing Margaret, day by day, living on, in meek
patience, amidst the destruction of hope and happiness which his
attachment had caused. When he did dwell upon it, his heart sank within
him. All that had made him unhappy seemed of late to have passed away.
For many months he had seen Margaret satisfied in her attachment to
another; he had seen Hester coming out nobly from the trial of
adversity, in which all her fine qualities had been exercised, and her
weaknesses almost subdued. She had been not only the devoted wife, but
patient and generous towards her foes, full of faith and cheerfulness in
her temper, and capable of any degree of self-denial in the conduct of
her daily life. She had been of late all that in the days of their
engagement--in the days when he had dealt falsely with his own mind--he
had trusted she would be. A friendship, whose tenderness was life
enough for them both, had grown up in his soul, and he had been at
peace. It had been a subject of incessant thankfulness to him, that the
evil of what he could now hardly consider as a false step had been
confined to himself--that his struggles, his strivings, the dreadful
solitary conflicts of a few months, had not been in vain; that he had
fulfilled the claims of both relations, and marred no one's peace. Now,
he was plunged into the struggle again. The cause was at an end; but
consequences, of perhaps endless wretchedness, remained to be borne.
His secret was known, and made the basis of untruths to which the whole
happiness of his household, so victoriously struggled for, so carefully
cherished by him, and so lately secured, must be sacrificed. Again and
again he turned from the fearful visions of Margaret cast off, of the
estrangement of the sisters, of the possible loss of some of their fair
fame--from these harrowing thoughts he turned again and again to
consider what must be done.--The most certain thing was, that he must
not by word, look, pause, or admission, countenance to Enderby himself
the supposition that he had not preferred Hester at the time she became
his wife. In the present state of their attachment, this was the merest
justice to her. Nothing that it was in Mrs Grey's power to reveal bore
a relation to any time later than his early, and, it might be assumed,
superficial, i