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.

“Here,” said he, “ended the worst of my state; for now I could at least put myself in the way of happiness; I could exert myself; I could do something.  But to be waiting so long in inaction, and waiting only for evil, had been dreadful.  Within the first five minutes I said, `I will be at Bath on Wednesday,’ and I was.  Was it unpardonable to think it worth my while to come? and to arrive with some degree of hope?  You were single.  It was possible that you might retain the feelings of the past, as I did; and one encouragement happened to be mine.  I could never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others, but I knew to a certainty that you had refused one man, at least, of better pretensions than myself; and I could not help often saying, `Was this for me?’”