“But do you not utterly despise me now? Me, whom you once thought retiring and dignified, to have been so lavish of my affections as to love one who is devoted to another, to pass my life nurturing a hopeless and an unlawful preference! Oh! that thought almost maddens me sometimes. You must look down upon me as a poor, abject, weak, and wicked creature.” “Fanny, don’t speak so of yourself, you make me miserable—it is I who ought to beg your forgiveness—it is I who have been guilty towards you—my foolish, selfish vanity could not bear to see him prefer you, and I did all I could to take him away from you; but I had no idea you really cared about him so much; I only meant to try my own power; and then, if you had seemed unhappy, I would have desisted,—at least I thought I would. But you appeared so cool, so indifferent, and then I liked him myself, and then I thought, if you cared so little, why there was no reason why I should give up so brilliant a _parti_, and then—I forgot all about you, and thought only of myself.” “You do think, then, he did like me once?” “It was that which piqued me so much; but, if I had known what you were feeling, dear Fanny——” “Oh, Isabella, this is ridiculous! You are, as it were, defending yourself to me—to me, who stand here self-betrayed—self-accused. Oh! it is all wrong; this must not be; we must forget all this—bury it in oblivion—let it be as though it had never been. Only make him happy, dearest Isabella, for your own sake—for his sake, and a little for my sake too. Make him happy, and I shall rejoice in the fate that has made you his wife; make him happy, as you value your own happiness and his, in this world and the next. But I forget myself again. It is not for me to guide others—weak, erring, sinful creature that I am.” She sank on the sofa, and, pressing her hands upon her eyes, and resting her head on the arm of the sofa, she strove to command and to subdue herself. Isabella stood motionless beside her, in thought as deep and as painful. A mist seemed to have fallen from her sight. She looked on life with different eyes from what she had done an hour before. The broken-hearted quivering form before her read her a lecture upon the effects of worldliness, which she had never thought of before. She saw, for the first time, what havoc blighted affections might cause. She thought of her husband, and she said to herself, “Shall I, through my own wilful folly, cause the misery of two good and amiable beings? I have already blasted the prospects of one, shall I throw a blight over those of the other, and that other the being I have sworn to love as long as I have life? Shall I have robbed poor Fanny of what would have made her happiness, and shall I not value the prize myself?”