From that period his penance had become severe. He had no sooner been
free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of
Louisa's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he
had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.
"I found," said he, "that I was considered by Harville an engaged man!
That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual
attachment. I was startled and shocked. To a degree, I could
contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others
might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself--I was
no longer at my own disposal. I was hers in honour if she wished it.
I had been unguarded. I had not thought seriously on this subject
before. I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its
danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be
trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the
risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill
effects. I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences."
He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that
precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at
all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him
were what the Harvilles supposed. It determined him to leave Lyme, and
await her complete recovery elsewhere. He would gladly weaken, by any
fair means, whatever feelings or speculations concerning him might
exist; and he went, therefore, to his brother's, meaning after a while
to return to Kellynch, and act as circumstances might require.
"I was six weeks with Edward," said he, "and saw him happy. I could
have no other pleasure. I deserved none. He enquired after you very
particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little
suspecting that to my eye you could never alter."
Anne smiled, and let it pass. It was too pleasing a blunder for a
reproach. It is something for a woman to be assured, in her
eight-and-twentieth year, that she has not lost one charm of earlier
youth; but the value of such homage was inexpressibly increased to
Anne, by comparing it with former words, and feeling it to be the
result, not the cause of a revival of his warm attachment.
He had remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own
pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released
from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her
engagement with Benwick.