And she had, as has been already indicated, that fault which, of all faults, perhaps, is most common to girls, whether nice or otherwise--that amiable weakness that is more disastrous in its consequences than many a downright vice--she was, if not quite a coward, cowardly. She was afraid to meet difficulties in the open, as it were--to attack the main body and scatter them, and have done with it; she sheltered herself in ambush, and made desultory attacks on flank and rear with temporary compromises, hating the thought of duplicity and longing to do right, yet most of all dreading the violent, harsh hurt to tender sensibilities (whether her own or other people's) that was inevitable in the shock of a pitched battle. It is a defect in a woman's character very much to be deplored, of course, and it is one that seems unpardonable to a strong-minded person. Nevertheless, it is much more of a misfortune than a fault (and we may as well say the same, while we are about it, of all our constitutional defects, from red hair to kleptomania, since we did not choose our parents nor the social conditions to which we were born); and to Rachel, whose instinctive truthfulness and high sense of moral rectitude prompted her to struggle hard, if vainly, against it, it was purely a misfortune, and at no time in her life more so than now. For, after turning the question over and over in her mind through all that feverish and wakeful night, she finally decided that in breaking off her engagement with Mr. Kingston she would not mention, either to him or to anyone else, the place that Mr. Dalrymple now occupied in her affections and affairs. As no one was aware of their having met, and as he was coming back himself so soon to clear up everything much better than she could, she persuaded herself that it would be not only unnecessary, but in the highest degree inexpedient, to aggravate the inevitable pain and difficulty that was before her and all of them. Hating his very name as they did, would she not expose her lover to insult, and his motives and actions to misconception, and probably prejudice their chances of happiness irrevocably? And at the same time do no good whatever, but only add an element of unspeakable bitterness to the disappointment of her aunt, and to the mortification of her already ill-used and much-wronged _fiancé_, and, as a matter of detail, an incalculable amount of difficulty to her own sufficiently formidable task? She was certain that she would, and she felt that she could not, and need not do it.