; it was the detection, in short--oh, Fanny! it was the
detection, not the offence, which she reprobated. It was the imprudence
which had brought things to extremity, and obliged her brother to give
up every dearer plan in order to fly with her."

He stopt. "And what," said Fanny (believing herself required to speak),
"what could you say?"

"Nothing, nothing to be understood. I was like a man stunned. She
went on, began to talk of you; yes, then she began to talk of you,
regretting, as well she might, the loss of such a--. There she spoke
very rationally. But she has always done justice to you. 'He has thrown
away,' said she, 'such a woman as he will never see again. She would
have fixed him; she would have made him happy for ever.' My dearest
Fanny, I am giving you, I hope, more pleasure than pain by this
retrospect of what might have been--but what never can be now. You do
not wish me to be silent? If you do, give me but a look, a word, and I
have done."

No look or word was given.

"Thank God," said he. "We were all disposed to wonder, but it seems to
have been the merciful appointment of Providence that the heart which
knew no guile should not suffer. She spoke of you with high praise and
warm affection; yet, even here, there was alloy, a dash of evil; for in
the midst of it she could exclaim, 'Why would not she have him? It is
all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted
him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and
Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object.
He would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Rushworth again.
It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly
meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.' Could you have believed it
possible? But the charm is broken. My eyes are opened."

"Cruel!" said Fanny, "quite cruel. At such a moment to give way to
gaiety, to speak with lightness, and to you! Absolute cruelty."

"Cruelty, do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is not a cruel
nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil
lies yet deeper: in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being
such feelings; in a perversion of mind which made it natural to her to
treat the subject as she did. She was speaking only as she had been used
to hear others speak, as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers
are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessa