Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility

Chapter 44 (continued)

"To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness!--Is there a man on earth who could have done it?--Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even THEN, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here--nor will I stop for YOU to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim--in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private-- a circumstance occurred--an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place,"--here he hesitated and looked down.--"Mrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection--but I need not explain myself farther," he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye--"your particular intimacy--you have probably heard the whole story long ago."

"I have," returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, "I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension."