"My dear, kind little cousin, I shall always be grateful to you, even though I fear it is not in your power to help me just now. Some day, perhaps, we may speak of it; in the meantime--I have had a great disappointment, and I think I had better go away for awhile, so as to be more fit to meet my friends when I return." He came back to her, raised her up, and spoke with resolution and cheerfulness. "Come, Georgiana, do not be sad, it is not worth while. I shall probably be at Pemberley in the autumn, and we must do something then to make up for the loss of our exploration party now. Do not think of me--at least, only think of me as catching and eating a great many salmon. I hope you will have great deal of pleasure still in London. You return to the Hursts to-day, do you not? Will you make my excuses to Mrs. Annesley?" During this speech Georgiana had striven to recover her composure, and she managed at the conclusion of it to look up at him with a tolerably calm face and to promise to deliver his messages. She felt convinced that he had been refused by Miss Crawford, and the situation was to her so dreadful, so far beyond repair, that it was a relief to see her cousin's courage, and to know that he did not wish to hear vain and spiritless words of consolation, words which she hardly could have been able to utter, even had he been able to listen, from the very surcharge of tender feeling that burdened her heart. Nevertheless, her sympathy was reflected in her eyes, and in the gentle voice with which she bid him adieu and wished him well. Fitzwilliam was not insensible to it. It gave him the only comfort he could have received at such a time; and pressing her hand warmly, with a very earnest "God bless you!" he quitted the room. As his footsteps died away Georgiana sank into a chair and wept bitterly. So brief had been his visit--a few ticks of the clock had seen his arrival and his departure; and in those few moments the aspect of everything had changed. Since their last meeting Georgiana had dwelt incessantly upon his prospects of happiness, and allowed herself to think of them as being in a fair way to become realized. The difficulty which Elizabeth must have referred to, and Mr. Yates had actually hinted at, could surely be cleared away now that he and Miss Crawford had met again; and Georgiana had not been able to read cruelty or harshness in that fair face. Time only--a very short time--would be necessary, and once Miss Crawford knew Fitzwilliam as he was, the rest would follow as a matter of course: for how could any woman whom he really loved be able to resist him? So reasoned Georgiana, and the collapse of her kindly hopes brought back all her old sense of personal guilt; she, too, was partly responsible for her cousin's dire fate, for was she not one of the two women who had failed to make him happy? She who had not been able to inspire him with a real love, and Miss Crawford who could not respond to it now it was fully awakened.