"I owe much already to your kindness," she said. "And I feel more deeply
indebted to it now than ever. If you hear any rumours of my marriage
when you get back to London contradict them at once, on my authority."
"Have you resolved to break your engagement?" I asked.
"Can you doubt it?" she returned proudly, "after what you have told me!"
"My dear Miss Rachel, you are very young--and you may find more
difficulty in withdrawing from your present position than you
anticipate. Have you no one--I mean a lady, of course--whom you could
consult?"
"No one," she answered.
It distressed me, it did indeed distress me, to hear her say that. She
was so young and so lonely--and she bore it so well! The impulse to help
her got the better of any sense of my own unfitness which I might have
felt under the circumstances; and I stated such ideas on the subject as
occurred to me on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability. I
have advised a prodigious number of clients, and have dealt with some
exceedingly awkward difficulties, in my time. But this was the first
occasion on which I had ever found myself advising a young lady how to
obtain her release from a marriage engagement.
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