rove off Miss
Sherwood beckoned to Darcy.

"I have not invited you," she said, "to the ceremony, because Captain
Garland has wished it to be as private as possible. But we shall expect
your company at breakfast, for which you must even have the patience to
wait till we return." Without giving any opportunity for reply, she drew
up the glass, and the carriage rolled off.

However Darcy might have hitherto borne himself up by a gloomy sense of
duty, by pride, and a bitter--oh, what bitter resignation!--when the
blow came, it utterly prostrated him. "She is gone!--lost!--Fool that I
have been!--What was this man more than I?" Stung with such reflections
as these, which were uttered in such broken sentences, he rapidly
retreated to the library, where he knew he should be undisturbed. He
threw himself into a chair, and planting his elbows on the table,
pressed his doubled fists, with convulsive agony, to his brows. All his
fortitude had forsaken him: he wept outright.

From this posture he was at length aroused by a gentle pressure on his
shoulder, and a voice calling him by his name. He raised his head: it
was Emily Sherwood, enquiring of him, quite calmly, why he was not at
the breakfast-table. There she stood, radiant with beauty, and in all
her bridal attire, except that she had thrown of her bonnet, and her
beautiful hair was allowed to be free and unconfined. Her hand was still
upon his shoulder.

"You are married, Emily," he said, as well as that horrible stifling
sensation in the breast would let him speak; "you are married, and I
must be for evermore a banished man. I leave you, Emily, and this roof,
for ever. I pronounce my own sentence of exile, for I _love_ you,
Emily!--and ever shall--passionately--tenderly--love you. Surely I may
say this now--now that it is a mere cry of anguish, and a misery
exclusively my own. Never, never--I feel that this is no idle
raving--shall I love another--never will this affection leave me--I
shall never have a home--never care for another--or myself--I am
alone--a wanderer--miserable. Farewell! I go--I know not exactly
where--but I leave this place."

He was preparing to quit the room, when Emily, placing herself before
him, prevented him. "And why," said she, "if you honoured me with this
affection, why was I not to know of it till now?"

"Can the heiress of Lipscombe Park ask that question?"

"Ungenerous! unjust!" said Emily. "Tell me, if one who can himself feel
and act