l avail you."

"In saying that, you are continuing to ill-treat me. Listen to me now. I
hardly know when it began, for, at first, I did not expect that you
would forgive me and let me be dear to you as I used to be; but as you
sat here, looking up into my face in the old way, it came on me
gradually--the feeling that it might be so; and I told myself that if
you would take me I might be of service to you, and I thought that I
might forgive myself at last for possessing this money if I could throw
it into your lap, so that you might thrive with it in the world; and I
said to myself that it might be well to wait awhile, till I should see
whether you really loved me; but then came that burst of passion, and
though I knew that you were wrong, I was proud to feel that I was still
so dear to you. It is all over. We understand each other at last, and
you may go. There is nothing to be forgiven between us."

He had now resolved that Florence must go by the board. If Julia would
still take him she should be his wife, and he would face Florence and
all the Burtons, and his own family, and all the world in the matter of
his treachery. What would he care what the world might say? His
treachery to Florence was a thing completed. Now, at this moment, he
felt himself to be so devoted to Julia as to make him regard his
engagement to Florence as one which must, at all hazards, be renounced.
He thought of his mother's sorrow, of his father's scorn--of the dismay
with which Fanny would hear concerning him a tale which she would
believe to be so impossible; he thought of Theodore Burton, and the
deep, unquenchable anger of which that brother was capable, and of
Cecilia and her outraged kindness; he thought of the infamy which would
be attached to him, and resolved that he must bear it all. Even if his
own heart did not move him so to act, how could he hinder himself from
giving comfort and happiness to this woman who was before him? Injury,
wrong, and broken-hearted wretchedness, he could not prevent; but,
therefore, this part was as open to him as the other. Men would say that
he had done this for Lady Ongar's money; and the indignation with which
he was able to regard this false accusation--for his mind declared such
accusation to be damnably false--gave him some comfort. People might say
of him what they pleased. He was about to do the best within his power.
Bad, alas, was the best, but it was of no avail now to think of that.

"Julia