Sink or Swim? , Volume II by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

"I had not the slightest intention of coming back -- God knows I had / not -- when I went away; but I am the weakest fool. I told myself again / and again that I was mad, and worse, to come where -- where you are, / Honor; " and he drew a long breath as the word came hesitatingly from his / lips; "but it would not do. The more I tried to forget, the more I / remembered; and the oftener I told myself that I _must_ not see you, the / more some evil thing within me urged me on to come."

Honor had listened to him hitherto in silence; partly through surprise, / and partly too because of that pitiable shrinking which so many women, / especially young women, experience when it becomes their duty to hurt / the feelings of men who venture to address them in language that ought / to be forbidden. If we could look with any degree of perspicacity into / the intricacies of female motives, I think it would be found that there / is no inconsiderable amount of selfishness in this fear of wounding the / susceptibilities of a too daring admirer. The chances that the hero of a / hundred such fights, when wounded and worsted in the last encounter, / will betake himself to fresh fields and pastures new, is not altogether / an agreeable one. The sternly virtuous female, left alone with the sole / reward -- not always a sufficing one -- of an approving conscience, is (and / she looks forward to this dismal _fait accompli_ with no reassuring / glance) not precisely in a cheerful position. It is never pleasant to be / forsaken -- never consoling to be abandoned to the society of a dull, / unappreciating husband, or, greater evil still, to the company of a / woman's own thoughts, the more especially when that woman has allowed / herself to listen to the voice of the charmer, and has grown accustomed / to the flattering attentions of an ever awake and devoted _soupirant_. / So the foolish wife -- a well-intentioned one, possibly, in spite of / vanity and its consequent shortcomings -- temporises, deliberates, puts / off till a more convenient season the vindication of her matronly / dignity, unconscious meanwhile that her feet are on the brink of a / precipice, and that the avenger of guilty thoughts is treading swift / behind her.