She loved him;
there was no withdrawing attentions avowedly dear to her.
He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little
excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest
inconstancy of mind towards her cousin. To keep Fanny
and the Bertrams from a knowledge of what was passing
became his first object. Secrecy could not have been
more desirable for Mrs. Rushworth's credit than he
felt it for his own. When he returned from Richmond,
he would have been glad to see Mrs. Rushworth no more.
All that followed was the result of her imprudence;
and he went off with her at last, because he could
not help it, regretting Fanny even at the moment,
but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of
the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him,
by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value
on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind,
and the excellence of her principles.
That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace,
should in a just measure attend _his_ share of the offence is,
we know, not one of the barriers which society gives
to virtue.
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