"My uncle is right," she said. "I have caused trouble and anxiety
enough to you, and to all about me. Let me cause no more, Marian--
let Sir Percival decide."
I remonstrated warmly, but nothing that I could say moved her.
"I am held to my engagement," she replied; "I have broken with my
old life. The evil day will not come the less surely because I
put it off. No, Marian! once again my uncle is right. I have
caused trouble enough and anxiety enough, and I will cause no
more."
She used to be pliability itself, but she was now inflexibly
passive in her resignation--I might almost say in her despair.
Dearly as I love her, I should have been less pained if she had
been violently agitated--it was so shockingly unlike her natural
character to see her as cold and insensible as I saw her now.
12th.--Sir Percival put some questions to me at breakfast about
Laura, which left me no choice but to tell him what she had said.
While we were talking she herself came down and joined us. She
was just as unnaturally composed in Sir Percival's presence as she
had been in mine. When breakfast was over he had an opportunity
of saying a few words to her privately, in a recess of one of the
windows.
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