Mr. Rushworth had no difficulty in procuring a divorce; and so ended a marriage contracted under such circumstances as to make any better end the effect of good luck, not to be reckoned on.  She had despised him, and loved another—­and he had been very much aware that it was so.  The indignities of stupidity, and the disappointments of selfish passion, can excite little pity.  His punishment followed his conduct, as did a deeper punishment the deeper guilt of his wife. He was released from the engagement, to be mortified and unhappy till some other pretty girl could attract him into matrimony again, and he might set forward on a second, and it is to be hoped more prosperous trial of the state—­if duped, to be duped at least with good humor and good luck; while she must withdraw with infinitely stronger feelings, to a retirement and reproach which could allow no second spring of hope or character.

Where she could be placed, became a subject of most melancholy and momentous consultation.  Mrs. Norris, whose attachment seemed to augment with the demerits of her niece, would have had her received at home and countenanced by them all.  Sir Thomas would not hear of it; and Mrs. Norris’s anger against Fanny was so much the greater, from considering her residence there as the motive.  She persisted in placing his scruples to her account, though Sir Thomas very solemnly assured her that had there been no young woman in question, had there been no young person of either sex belonging to him, to be endangered by the society or hurt by the character of Mrs. Rushworth, he would never have offered so great an insult to the neighborhood as to expect it to notice her.  As a daughter—­he hoped a penitent one—­she should be protected by him, and secured in every comfort and supported by every encouragement to do right which their relative situations admitted; but farther than that he would not go.  Maria had destroyed her own character; and he would not, by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored, be affording his sanction to vice, or, in seeking to lessen its disgrace, be anywise accessory to introducing such misery in another man’s family as he had known himself....

Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long.  Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness.  Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him.  His affection had already done something.  Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her.  Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained; especially when that marriage had taken place, which