Ernest was thunderstricken! He was no coxcomb, but neither was he devoid of penetration; and he knew her so well.--had traced, as he believed, so clearly the rise and progress of her affection for him--an affection ripened, and, as it were, sanctified, by their joint attendance beside her mother’s sick bed--that, although from a slight tendency to waywardness which he was aware lurked in her disposition, he anticipated some little difficulty in obtaining her consent to their union, yet the idea that his offer should be met with a calm and deliberate refusal, had never occurred to him even as a possibility. After a minute’s pause, he exclaimed-- “I am grieved,--pained beyond expression!--nay,” he continued, gaining courtage from the strength of his convictions, “I will even dare to add, surprised. Emily, I cannot bring myself to believe that my offer has come upon you unexpectedly; you _must_ have been aware of my affection for you?” Receiving no answer, he continued in a sterner tone, “I am then to understand that, perceiving my attachment, without returning it, you have led me on merely to gratify your heartless vanity, till, in my weak trustfulness, I have placed it in your power to inflict this blow upon me--a blow, the effects of which years will fail to counteract. It is not my pride that is wounded: the little pride I ever possessed has been pretty well taken out of me by the drudgery of life ere this; but that such deep, unselfish love, such entire boundless trust, should have been thus bitterly deceived, thus heartlessly rejected, and by one who seemed all truth, innocence, and gentleness--Oh! it is unnatural, incredible’” He sprang from his chair, and began pacing the room with rapid strides, then continued, “But I will overcome it; it is unworthy to be thus affected--to feel thus for one capable of such deception. No! cost me what it may, I will crush----!” “Gently, my dear sir, gently: you may crush exactly what you please of your own--your outraged affections, your rejected heart, or that very nice new hat which you purchased in your way through London--though that would be the most wantonly extravagant act of the three; but you mustn’t crush our Rosebud, albeit she is such a heartless little tigress. Ay I you may well stop and look at her! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Carrington! so you ought! And you a clergyman, too! “Stop and look at her!” Why, what was there to see in that calm, expressionless face, that cold stoical exterior?--only that the said stoicism had turned out a dead failure, broken down with its would-be professor at the critical moment, and there she was crying her woman’s tender heart out, through her woman’s beautiful eyes, more like Niobe than Plato, by long odds.