The fate of the Eversleighs was in her hands; she could save them, but at what a price!
The sacrifice of her own happiness.
She could save them, but only by condemning herself to misery for the rest of her life.
As she sat thinking, thinking of the wretchedness that must be hers as the wife of Bennet, the poor girl closed her eyes, as if thus she could shut out that blank and dreary prospect. She had no illusions as to the nature of the man. In her heart she called him a bully and a brute, and she knew he was a desperate gambler. Her life with him could be nothing but one long horror.
"I cannot marry him," she said, rebelling against the harshness and bitterness of the dilemma thrust upon her.
"But what then?" she asked herself.
She knew Bennet would keep his word did she refuse to marry him; Francis Eversleigh would be arrested, and he and his family overwhelmed in one common ruin.
"How can I permit it?" she said.
Hitherto she had striven to keep the thought of her lover, Gilbert, out of her mind, so as to be able to reason more clearly, but in its background Gilbert had always been. She loved him with her whole heart, and it was seldom that, consciously or unconsciously, she was not thinking about him. She had looked forward with pride and joy to being his wife. And now?
Bennet had declared that Gilbert's father's ruin would be Gilbert's ruin too.