ach the woman's heart. The
woman is rejoiced to feel that she owns permanently that which has
been often reached before. The man may know that in his own case it
is not so with him. But as there has been no concealment, or perhaps
only a little to conceal, he takes it as it comes and makes the best
of it. His Mary may have liked some other one, but it has not gone
farther. Or if she has been engaged as a bride there has been no
secret about it. Or it has been a thing long ago so that there has
been time for new ideas to form themselves. The husband when he does
come knows at any rate that he has no ground of complaint, and is not
kept specially in the dark when he takes his wife. But Mr. Western
had been kept specially in the dark, and was of all men the least
able to endure such treatment. To have been kept in the dark as to
the man with whom the girl was engaged, as he thought, at the very
moment in which she had accepted him! To have been made use of as a
step, on which a disadvantageous marriage might be avoided without
detriment to her own interest! It was this feeling which made him
utterly prostrate,--which told him that death itself would be the one
desirable way out of his difficulties if death were within his reach.

When he received the letter from his sister telling him that he might
probably become the father of a child, he was at the first prepared
to say that thus would they two be reconciled. He could hardly live
apart, not only from the mother of his child, but from the child
itself. He went away into solitude and wept hot tears as he thought
of it all. But ever as he thought of it the cause of his anger came
back to him and made him declare to himself that in the indulgence
of no feeling of personal tenderness ought he to disgrace himself.
At any rate it could not be till she should have told him the whole
truth,--till she should have so told her story as to enable him to
ascertain whether that story were in all respects true. At present,
as he said to himself, he was altogether in the dark. But in fact
had he now learned the very story as it had existed, and had Cecilia
told it as far as she was able to tell it all, she would even in
his estimation have been completely white-washed. In her perfect
absolution from the terrible sin of which he now accused her he would
have forgiven and forgotten altogether the small, the trifling fault,
which she had in truth committed.

There was something of nobilit