Here, again, he disarmed me by not attempting to defend himself.
He would merely beg me to remember the difference there was
between his allowing Miss Fairlie to give him up, which was a
matter of submission only, and his forcing himself to give up Miss
Fairlie, which was, in other words, asking him to be the suicide
of his own hopes. Her conduct of the day before had so
strengthened the unchangeable love and admiration of two long
years, that all active contention against those feelings, on his
part, was henceforth entirely out of his power. I must think him
weak, selfish, unfeeling towards the very woman whom he idolised,
and he must bow to my opinion as resignedly as he could--only
putting it to me, at the same time, whether her future as a single
woman, pining under an unhappily placed attachment which she could
never acknowledge, could be said to promise her a much brighter
prospect than her future as the wife of a man who worshipped the
very ground she walked on? In the last case there was hope from
time, however slight it might be--in the first case, on her own
showing, there was no hope at all.
I answered him--more because my tongue is a woman's, and must
answer, than because I had anything convincing to say.
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