The sobs were at her very lips, but the word got out first.
"It is no wonder," he observed gently.
"Yes it is wonder," said Elizabeth; — "or at least it is what needn't be. Yours wouldn't be so in any circumstances."
"What makes the confusion?" — he asked, in a gentle considerate tone that did not press for an answer.
"The want of a single fixed thing that my thoughts can cling to."
He was silent a good while after that.
"There is nothing fixed in this world," he said at length.
"Yes there is," said Elizabeth bitterly. "There are friends — and there is a self-reliant spirit — and there is a settled mind."
"Settled — about what?"
"What it will and what it ought to do."