Mary was extremely bruised;
one side of her face received a blow which swelled it so violently that
her eye was quite closed, and her body was all over contusions. She was
taken up senseless, entirely stunned by the shock. As soon as she was
carried home, she was put to bed; a fever ensued, and she lay a
fortnight in a deplorable condition, though her life was not thought to
be in danger. Her pain, for the greatest part of that time, was too
acute to suffer her to reflect much on the different manner in which she
had intended to employ that period; and when her mind became more at
liberty, her disappointment did not sit too heavy on her spirits; for as
her heart was not really touched, she considered the delay which this
ill-timed accident had occasioned without any great concern, and rather
pleased herself with thinking that she should give an uncommon proof of
spirit, in undertaking a long journey, so soon after she was recovered
from a very evident proof that travelling is not free from danger. As
she had during this confinement more time to think than all her life had
yet afforded her, a doubt would sometimes occur, whether she did right
in entering into such an engagement without the consent of her aunt, to
whom she was much obliged. But these scruples soon vanished, and she
wondered how such odd notions came into her head, never having heard the
word duty used, but to ridicule somebody who made it the rule of their
conduct. By all she had been able to observe, pleasure was the only aim
of persons of genius, whose thoughts never wandered but from one
amusement to another, and, 'why should not she be guided by inclination
as well as other people?' That one question decided the point, and all
doubts were banished.

Before the blackness which succeeded the swelling was worn off her face,
and consequently before she could appear abroad, a young lady of her
acquaintance, who, out of charity, relinquished the diversions of the
place to sit an afternoon with Lady Mary, told her as a whimsical piece
of news she had just heard (and to tell which was the real motive for
her kind visit, having long felt a secret envy of Lady Mary) that, her
lover, Mr Lenman, had been married some years, to a young lady of small
fortune, whom he treated on that account with so little ceremony that
for a considerable time he did not own his marriage, and since he
acknowledged it had kept her constantly at his house in Wales.

This was indeed