Doubt and fear were past, she and Philip were secure of each other, he was pardoned, and they could be together without apprehension, or playing tricks with their consciences; but she had as yet scarcely been able to spend any time with him; and as Charles said, their ways were far more grave and less lover-like than would have seemed natural after their long separation.
In truth, romantic and uncalculating as their attachment was, they never had been lover-like. They had never had any fears or doubts; her surrender of her soul had been total, and every thought, feeling, and judgment had taken its colour from him as entirely as if she had been a wife of many years’ standing. She never opened her mind to perceive that he had led her to act wrongly, and all her unhappiness had been from anxiety for him, not repentance on her own account; for so complete was her idolatry, that she entirely overlooked her failure in duty to her parents.
It took her by surprise when, as they set out together that evening to walk home from East-hill, he said, as soon as they were apart from the village—
‘Laura, you have more to forgive than all.’
‘Don’t, speak so, Philip, pray don’t. Do you think I would not have borne far more unhappiness willingly for your sake? Is it not all forgotten as if it had not been?’
‘It is not unhappiness I meant,’ he replied, ‘though I cannot bear to think of what you have undergone. Unhappiness enough have I caused indeed. But I meant, that you have to forgive the advantage I took of your reliance on me to lead you into error, when you were too young to know what it amounted to.’
‘It was not an engagement,’ faltered Laura.
‘Laura, don’t, for mercy’s sake, recall my own hateful sophistries,’ exclaimed Philip, as if unable to control the pain it gave him; ‘I have had enough of that from my sister;’ then softening instantly: ‘it was self-deceit; a deception first of myself, then of you. You had not experience enough to know whither I was leading you, till I had involved you; and when the sight of death showed me the fallacy of the salve to my conscience, I had nothing for it but to confess, and leave you to bear the consequences. O Laura! when I think of my conduct towards you, it seems even worse than that towards—towards your brother-in-law!’
His low, stern tone of bitter suffering and self-reproach was something new and frightful to Laura. She clung to his arm and tried to say—‘O, don’t speak in that way! You know you meant the best. You could not help being mistaken.’
‘If I did know any such thing, Laura! but the misery of perceiving that my imagined anxiety for his good,—his good, indeed! was but a cloak for my personal enmity—you can little guess it.’