 Willoughby, she could have invented some equivalent, to do her heart
justice for the injury it sustained in her being unable to name the true and
immense objection: but the pair in presence paralyzed her. She dramatized them
each springing forward by turns, with crushing rejoinders. The activity of her
mind revelled in giving them a tongue, but would not do it for herself. Then
ensued the inevitable consequence of an incapacity to speak at the heart's
urgent dictate: heart and mind became divided. One throbbed hotly, the other
hung aloof; and mentally, while the sick inarticulate heart kept clamouring, she
answered it with all that she imagined for those two men to say. And she dropped
poison on it to still its reproaches: bidding herself remember her fatal
postponements in order to preserve the seeming of consistency before her father;
calling it hypocrite; asking herself, what was she! who loved her! And thus
beating down her heart, she completed the mischief with a piercing view of the
foundation of her father's advocacy of Willoughby, and more lamentably asked
herself what her value was, if she stood bereft of respect for her father.
    Reason, on the other hand, was animated by her better nature to plead his
case against her: she clung to her respect for him, and felt herself drowning
with it: and she echoed Willoughby consciously, doubling her horror with the
consciousness, in crying out on a world where the most sacred feelings are
subject to such lapses. It doubled her horror, that she should echo the man; but
it proved that she was no better than he: only some years younger. Those years
would soon be outlived: after which, he and she would be of a pattern. She was
unloved: she did no harm to any one by keeping her word to this man: she had
pledged it, and it would be a breach of faith not to keep it. No one loved her.
Behold the quality of her father's love! To give him happiness was now the
principal aim for her, her own happiness being decently buried; and here he was
happy: why should she be the cause of his going and losing the poor pleasure he
so much enjoyed?
    The idea of her devotedness flattered her feebleness. She betrayed signs of
hesitation; and in hesitating, she looked away from a look at Willoughby,
thinking (so much against her nature was it to resign herself to him) that it
would not have been so difficult with an ill-favoured man. With one horribly
ugly, it would have been a horrible exultation
