Lyme, he had received lessons of more
than one sort. The passing admiration of Mr Elliot had at least roused
him, and the scenes on the Cobb and at Captain Harville's had fixed her
superiority.

In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the
attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to
be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care, for Louisa;
though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed
it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which
Louisa's could so ill bear a comparison, or the perfect unrivalled hold
it possessed over his own. There, he had learnt to distinguish between
the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the
darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind. There
he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had
lost; and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of
resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in
his way.

From that period his penance had become severe. He had no sooner been
free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of
Louisa's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he
had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.

"I found," said he, "that I was considered by Harville an engaged man!
That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual
attachment. I was startled and shocked. To a degree, I could
contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others
might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself--I was
no longer at my own disposal. I was hers in honour if she wished it.
I had been unguarded. I had not thought seriously on this subject
before. I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its
danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be
trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the
risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill
effects. I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences."

He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that
precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at
all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him
were what the Harvilles supposed. It determined him to leave Lyme, and
await her complete recovery elsewhere