But another, and far stronger reason against writing to him, made itself
presently clear to her mind: if she wrote, she could not know how he
received her sad story; and if his mind required making up, which was
what she feared, he would have time for it! This would not do! She must
communicate the dread defiling fact with her own lips! She must see how
he took it! Like Hamlet with the king at the play, "If he but blench, I
know my course!" she said. If he showed the slightest change towards
her, the least tendency to regard his relation to her as an
entanglement, to regret that he had involved himself with the sister of
a thief, marry her he should not! That was settled as the earth's
course! If he was not to be her earthly refuge in this trouble as in any
other, she would none of him! If it should break her heart she would
none of him! But break her heart it would not! There were worse evils
than losing a lover! There was losing a true man--and that he would not
be if she lost him! The behaviour of Cornelius had perhaps made her more
capable of doubt; possibly her righteous anger with him inclined her to
imagine grounds of anger with another; but probably this feeling of
uncertainty with regard to her lover had been prepared for by things
that had passed between them since their engagement, but upon which
regarding herself as his wife, she had not allowed herself to dwell,
turning her thought to the time when, as she imagined, she would be able
to do so much more for and with him.
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