i.

If life indeed imitated art—as Lorelai pondered with a chill after her conversation with her daughter about one Anne and Wentworth—then it would be remiss to speak of Rory and Logan's Austen without giving voice to the mothers and sisters that inhabited the artist's pages.

There was Honor Huntzberger, for one, who had the privilege of being the first in Logan's family to be introduced to Rory the girlfriend. She had liked Rory well enough, and thought her a brave little thing to suffer her mother's disdain and persist in a relationship with her rake of a brother. They never did go shopping, or out to lunch, as she was wont to tell Rory the few occasions that they spoke ("We must go shopping sometime!"). They never did become friends, especially after that sad little fiasco with her admittedly sluttish bridesmaids Walker and Alexandra. But despite this, she could appreciate how…good Rory was for Logan. (God knows how much she and Logan needed a Josh and Rory at some point in their grown-up lives, so crappy was their childhood.) She also knew they wouldn't last.

In the seven or so years since she and Rory last saw each other, Honor had two little daughters with Josh, now her ex-husband. In the stress of divorce (thank God for the prenup!) and the flurry of raising her princesses in a manner befitting their status, Honor could not be blamed for not giving another thought to Rory Gilmore. At Logan's engagement party, she had eyed and coveted the blue-black dress worn by who she thought was merely David Monroe's pretty date.

Shira Huntzberger, on the other hand, knew perfectly well who David Monroe was dancing with at Logan and Louisa's party. And as she calmly sipped her champagne and watched the young couples sashay around the floor, she saw—with a mother's uncanny sixth sense—that her son's self-possessed and carefree air had been disturbed; there was a tell-tale stiffness in the way he held his head and Louisa's hand. Shira watched, and waited, and saw—there it was: as they passed the other couple, her son had looked at the dark-haired woman and caught her eye for an infinitesimal moment. Their eyes darted away, but not before their countenances changed, flushed, glowed with some preternatural light in awareness of the other.

"Vanessa—" Shira turned to the woman beside her. "Tell me, is that the Gilmore girl David is dancing with?"

"Oh, I don't know her. David has yet to introduce her to me. But Elise did tell me that David had a new girlfriend he seemed crazy about." She dropped her voice in a conspiratorial whisper. "You know she's dying for David to settle down, and she's positively green with envy that my Louisa will be first. But—did you say Gilmore?"

At the mention of David—her prospective daughter-in-law's cousin—possibly settling down with the woman who once spurned her son, Shira's mind hummed with meditated intervention.

"Yes, Gilmore. Emily Gilmore's granddaughter."

"That's wonderful, then," Vanessa replied. "We know Emily and Richard. It's too bad they're on holiday in Australia, though my complexion does hanker for warmer climes at this time of year."

She looked at David's partner with renewed interest and appreciation, complacent in that single piece of information regarding her bloodline. It assured her that the desirable and right characteristics have been bred into the girl.

"We do know Emily and Richard," Shira began. "But—oh, I don't know…" she trailed off, sipping her champagne with a worried air.

Such hesitation predictably piqued the listener's attention. Vanessa turned to Shira with focused attentiveness. "What do you mean? What is it?"

"Well the granddaughter did not grow up with Emily and Richard. They weren't even close. Her mother—you might have forgotten?—her mother cut off her relationship with them when she got pregnant at 16. The girl was quite wild. Headstrong. Broke her mother's heart."

Vanessa puckered her forehead. "Oh right, I do remember. She's about my age. Oh, and—why, she's the owner of this quaint little bed and breakfast Charles was raving about!" Her face brightened with remembrance. "He swore he'd quit building his massive hotels after staying there a night…as if! The Dragonfly I think it's called, right?"

This was not the reaction Shira had been hoping for.

"Right," she replied flatly. "It's this daughter that worries me. I've heard…well, perhaps it isn't right to worry Elise needlessly." Her lips worked themselves to an effortful smile.

"What is it, Shira? If it concerns David then I think she has the right to know. I can tell her about it if you're uncomfortable. The girlfriend…there's something wrong?"

That was the reaction Shira had been hoping for.

"Well I've heard that she's quite the—what's the term? Golddigger sounds so crass—" she muttered audibly. "'Ambitious', one might say. She had a boyfriend, once, they were to be engaged, I believe—"

At this point, Shira genuinely hesitated. Would she sacrifice the reputation of her son to save him? Oh, to have a cigarette! Vanessa was looking at her expectantly. Shira decidedly steered her towards a quiet corner of the room.

"The boy lost a lot of money, a failed venture in his father's business. He was—he was fired, and was left practically penniless and without future prospects. Well the girl had her heart set on entering the boy's—I mean, our, you know. This." She looked around the room. "She didn't grow up into it, after all. She had been living with the boy, enjoying all the advantages that a relationship with him provided, until—well, until he was virtually disowned, that is." Shira pressed her lips together nervously (a cigarette, after!).

"She left him because of that?"

"Well I don't know if it was just because of that—they had so many other troubles besides—but she broke off their engagement very soon after that." Shira shuddered. "You recall that Emily had been hosting all these events in the last few years? It seems the granddaughter wants to—I don't know—settle down, as you say. She's a newspaper reporter." She uttered the last sentence with emphasis, to express the desperation of her situation.

"Who was the boy?" Vanessa asked plaintively.

Shira bent her head closer to Vanessa's. "I just—I just couldn't tell you. The parents are very close, very close friends. But he's gone out of the country, so devastated he was. He had turned his back on everything, because of her. I haven't heard anything about him, really."

Vanessa was troubled, but not fully persuaded of the gravity of the situation. "But Elise—she tells me that this girl is quite wonderful, and that David has been so happy…"

"Tell me, Vanessa, tell me. Does that look like a couple very much in love?" Shira pressed Vanessa's arm to turn her, so that the woman once again had a view of the dancing couples.

David's gaze was undisputably doting as he looked down at Rory's face. He was craning his head and leaning his body towards her—yet how awkward it appeared to the observant eye, because that eye would have likewise discerned that the girl was arching her body away from his, her posture quite unnatural. Her head, rather than tilted upwards to gaze at her partner's face, was levelled at the height of his neck. Her eyes (how shockingly blue they were!) were shifting here and there, but alighted most often at some distant point beyond David's shoulder. Rory seemed distracted and far, far away. She looked, least of all, in love.

"Oh," was all Vanessa thought to say, as she looked back at Shira. (Had she happened to look at the other couple, she might have witnessed the same vacant expression in her future son-in-law's eyes, and experienced the greater shock.) Love was certainly neither a sufficient nor necessary condition for marriage, but to flout it so blatantly was just so…inappropriate. Shira shook her head sideways, ever so discreetly, to convey her sympathy. Then she drifted away, in search of some space and a smoke. Her deed was done. Neither Vanessa nor Elise would require further persuasion.

And so, Rory found herself soon to be shunned from the society she never sought to enter. In refusing to marry Logan Huntzberger, she had committed the gravest mistake, one that any mother would be hard-pressed to forgive. Here is the real story, the one that had been twisted and turned in Shira's head: because of her, or inspired by her, Logan abandoned his destiny and left his father's company. Because of her, Logan transported himself across the country and suffered heavily, wasting away two years of his life for love of her. Who did she think she was, the undeserving, worthless woman!, Shira thought, dragging deeply onto her cigarette. She must never enter their circle and wreak her havoc again. Especially not at this point in her son's life, poised as he is at the threshold of personal and professional success.

Of the smallest consequence to Rory was the impending end of her relationship with David (since she was steps ahead of Shira in planning it). Of the greatest consequence is that with its demise, any link between her and Logan will also be severed. Perhaps for good, this time around. Perhaps for the good of everyone, the mothers Lorelai and Shira would agree on the sole point. Then again, Austen mothers are quite notorious for not knowing best.

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ii.

The buzzing in Rory's head was incessant. She shifted painfully in search of a softer spot to cushion her tender joints. Her self-medication thus far seemed unsuccessful; she had pined for slumber deep and impervious to the…there it was again, buzz, buzz, buzzzz! As she gradually surfaced to consciousness, she realized that the pounding of her head was of a different, separate rhythm than the buzzing in her ear. That in fact the buzz did not emanate from inside her, but from her door, a million paces beyond her bed of balled-up tissues.

Go away! she moaned, tugging the covers over her head. Yet whoever it was at her door was relentless. Oh joy, maybe it's her neighbor Mrs. Marjorie Bleeker come to retrieve her Victoria Secret catalogue that accidentally fell into Rory's mailbox now and then. Or—bother—maybe it's an emergency. A fire, or some other matter of life or death. Whatever it was, Rory's resolute conscience could not keep her from answering her persistent caller.

She shuffled out her bedroom, dragging her quilt behind her like a cape. She opened her door with the chain yet fastened, and beheld the scrunched-up face of a young woman in the gap. Her cheekbones were pushed up under her eyes in a grimace that alternated between annoyance and apologetic anxiety.

"Can I help you?" Rory croaked.

"Are you Lorelai Leigh Gilmore?" the woman asked with some impatience. (She was, after all, illegally parked at the curb below the apartment building.)

"Uh, I'm having a bit of an out of body experience right now," she replied thickly. "But I do think that's me and my name, yes."

"Really? No shit," Shiela let out in disbelief, her romantic visions disintegrating as she contemplated puffy eyes and red nose, hair plastered on one side and flying any which way on the other. This bedraggled vision was to be the recipient of her carefully assembled and lovingly wrapped care package. (Oh why, Mr. Huntzberger, why?)

"I'm dying here, what do you want?" Rory finally snapped.

"Oh, sorry. This here is for you." She pointed to a large box by her feet.

Rory peered down and saw that the sizable package was simply but elegantly wrapped in cream colored paper and thick chocolate brown string. "Goody. Is that the home theatre system I ordered?"

"No," Shiela huffed indignantly.

"Um. Okay. What is it? Who is it from? Do I sign, pay…?" She would be rid of the woman and leave the pretty box outside for now. It looked heavy, and she hadn't the energy to bring it in, nor an iota of curiosity stirring in her drug-addled brain. It was probably from her mother, and this rude woman a Fed-Ex messenger in training.

"It's from Mr. Logan Huntzberger." She said the name with haughty flourish, calculated to make the grumpy, unkempt Ms. Lorelai Leigh Gilmore feel either deeply obliged or ashamed to be gifted anything by such a personage.

But Rory merely felt stupid. "What did you say?" Her sense of hearing was quite unfocused, blurry, connected as it was to her clogged nose.

"The package is from Mr. Logan Huntzberger. It contains some perishables, and things that melt, so you'd better bring it in. Okay?" Shiela looked at her wristwatch, saw that it was 8:42 in the evening, and blew out a sigh of relief. Never mind that she had probably earned herself a parking ticket and was an hour late for dinner with her boyfriend; she was able to fulfill Mr. Huntzberger's request that the package be delivered today.

"Oh, and you need to get back to bed or hop in the shower," she addressed Rory petulantly before turning to go. "You look horrible."

"Thank you," Rory murmured absent-mindedly.

She prodded the package into her apartment with a bare foot. Eyeing the square, solid thing for several moments, she felt a deep flush of warmth creep up from her belly to suffuse her clammy neck, face, and other extremities. Her heart began to thump audibly in her chest, and for the first time that day, she became aware of the urge to pee. Her physiological system switched on, hummed alive and—not kicking—but in relative riot compared to her comatose state the last 12 hours. She settled in a heap beside the package.

Last night—she pondered with her head resting against the box—she and Logan were thrown together by some bizarre force of circumstance. But this gesture went beyond the blind machinations of fate. There was purpose, forethought, intent in the production of this package. It was for her. How well she remembered Logan and his little (well, large, actually) stunts and gifts. What can this mean? It seemed best to open it and be done with it. Yet how she dreaded crushing—or inflaming—the swelling little wave in her chest. And so she overthought it a while longer, her ear pressed to the carton.

A small envelope had been inserted under the string, and inside, of course, a note. Rory ran the pads of her fingers over the paper's cottony, fibered texture; she could see the threads up close. She put it to her nose, inhaling lightly, as if to discern by scent the sentiments of the hand that previously held it. She caught, instead, a whiff of his after-shave. And vaguely, chicken soup.

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Rory,

I'm sorry to hear that you're sick. You, on the other hand, have no reason to be sorry. Not for anything, anymore. (Except—for being stubborn and staying out in the cold.) It isn't anger or resentment I feel for you. The antics of Holly Golightly or Emma Woodhouse should cheer you. Drink the water. Try to have some of the soup before the marshmallows. Be okay.

Logan.

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Amidst the very cordial health-related admonitions cramming the little notecard (in truth, it seemed the writer had much more to say, but did not know what to say, and so ended up saying things that did not need to be said), one sentence stood out to Rory. The words linked hands with the little wave that hung suspended in her chest, cranking up a foolish happy dance.

It isn't anger or resentment I feel for you.

Rory loved words, and had a peculiar obsession with grammar. (There were the various editions of Strunk and White's Elements of Style scattered around her home and office; Pinker's The Language Instinct in a venerated space on her shelf reserved for favorite non-fiction. The Grammar Girl podcast in her iPod.) She could not help, therefore, analyzing the sentence's structure to pieces.

He could have said, for instance, I am not angry or resentful towards you. Or: I do not feel anger or resentment for you. Or: I feel neither anger nor resentment for you. And Anger or resentment I feel not for you (if he were feeling rather more Shakespearean).

But instead, he wrote it the way he did: It isn't anger or resentment I feel for you. Hanging, somewhat ambiguous and roundabout, it made ever so small but meaningful a difference. It insinuated, intentionally or not, that there were feelings…

Filled with his large, expansive handwriting, the letters cursive but disconnected (like gaps in teeth, she once complained), the card left no more space for Logan to explicate nor Rory to decipher what feelings there were. Yet whatever they are, they are not bad.

Could he have known she would read his note in this way? (Why yes, of course.)

At the wake of this conclusion, Rory took a quick, warm shower. She then dutifully consumed the entire bowl of chicken soup and two of the dozen oranges. She avoided eating the candy for now, not because he no longer knew what she liked, but because her throat felt too raw for sweets. By the time Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak kissed in the rain, Rory felt her sinuses clear and she was nearly, very nearly, okay. (All in keeping with the directive to Be okay.) The box she opened had suffused the air with what had been loved and familiar, and the memories were palliative in effect. How uncanny that after all this time, and despite the measure of pain he himself once wrought, Logan still knew how to make her pain go away.

This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before…he could not be unfeeling…though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. - Chapter X

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iii.

Her call was answered at the fifth ring. Just her luck—she had promised herself she would hold out only until the sixth. Then again, there was no answer, no "Hello". Someone had simply picked up the phone and was waiting for her, the caller, to speak, as though the receiver cannot be bothered to utter a word. The violation of conventional telephone etiquette was disconcerting.

"Uh…hello?" Rory tentatively spoke. "Um, anyone there?"

Silence.

"I must have the wrong number, I'm sorry."

"Rory?"

He was confused. The voice was thoroughly out of context. To hear it rasp into his ear, puncturing the numbers, graphs, percentages of HPG revenues in his head, was surreal.

"Logan?"

"Yes. Rory?"

"Hi! It's, uh, Sunday."

"Okaay…" His mouth spontaneously turned up to smile at her unremarkable introduction. "Um, thanks for letting me know. I was about to miss church. Or brunch. Or whatever it is people do on Sundays."

"I meant I didn't expect you to be at your office."

"And yet you called."

"Yes. I did." Silly me.

"Unless there was someone else you wanted to speak to? I've got Greg here, but he's washing windows just now."

"I was rather expecting an automaton to answer, kinda like the redhead you sent to do your bidding last night."

"Automaton, really? Been meaning to set her up with Finn. I think she's nice."

"Perhaps she thinks you more charming than I. Hey, Logan—I just wanted to say thank you. For the things you sent me."

"You're welcome. And thanks for thinking me charming."

"I said she finds you charming. So, um…I was thinking we might never see each other again, so I thought I should try to call."

(There were, after all, so many reasons in favor of never seeing each other again. One—or two—would be the quiet pleasure now expanding and gaining speed, thrilling one end of the telephone cable to the other. They were only vaguely aware of how they clung to the sound of the other breathing in their ear, as their own breathing fell short and inadequate.)

"Well that sounds ominous," he said lightly. "Thanks for this last call, then."

"You're welcome."

"Strange that you think we'd never see each other again. Last I heard, we had common bedfellows."

Not for long, Rory thought, with greater relief than regret.

"Yeah, well…I wanted to thank you personally, and not spring it on you in public or in the company of…others."

"Why not?"

"Because I…I was thinking that…I don't know. Not that I want to keep it a secret or anything clandestine like that…"

"Clandestine." He rather enjoyed the sound of it.

"…but the matter of jet-puffed marshmallows and The Life of Brian might get awkward," she continued.

He laughed. "Right. It would ruin you."

"Or you, since you thought to give them as gifts for one practically at her deathbed."

"My reputation has endured worst slander, you know."

"A source of pride, I'm sure. So anyway, that's all."

"Okay."

"Bye now—"

"How are you feeling?" He grasped the phone tighter.

"Better." Brought to mind, she coughed. "And with this voice, I can belt out a mean rendition of 'Bette Davis' Eyes'. It's a wonder you knew it was me."

"I'll know you."

Silence, as Rory unravelled loose threads from her blanket.

"So it was the water?" Logan asked, steering the topic back to the mundane.

"Water?"

"It's French. The best water there is, so my automaton said."

"I do sense a detox effect coming on; my freckles have lightened considerably. As to my flu, the credit goes to Nyquil, I think. But the oranges were good, as was Ms. Golightly."

"So you ate the fruit. I stand corrected, you have changed."

"Oh, yeah. I consumed the box of Cocoa Puffs and realized my tastes now much prefer Apple Jacks and Froot Loops. Older and wiser, as they say."

"I'll make a note of that, for future medicinal purposes. Apples and multi-colored fruit, yes. Raisin Bran?"

"Raisins are the shrivelled-up remains of fruit. They are not fruit in and of themselves."

"Point well taken. So tell me what else you've wised up about in the last seven years." Logan leaned back comfortably in his seat, cradling her voice against his shoulder.

Rory did not feel any wiser. At that very moment, she felt considerably stupid for continuing to converse with Logan, when the sole purpose of her call—to say thank you—had been accomplished 6 lengthy minutes ago.

"I'm afraid the collective pearls of recent years has been confined to the matter of breakfast food."

"Huh. For a last call, this is rather disappointing. It is lacking in all manner of lurid self-revelation or sweeping philosophy about the meaning of life."

"I can still put my bedroom voice to good use and sing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. Would that do as a parting gift?"

"From you, not quite. I can think of other, better parting gifts and uses of bedroom voices."

The words left his mouth without premeditation as Rory, bedroom, voice, parting coalesced in his head. Fuck. What did he just say? How could he have spiralled from breakfast food to bedroom? He had unthinkingly wandered to a part of their history when the telephone served other (clandestine) purposes than conversation.

"Sorry," he muttered, sitting up and leaning his elbows on his desk. Spying a framed photograph of Louisa at the corner, he reached for it and placed it squarely in front of him. Paradoxically, the image of his fiancee before him effectively converted his conversation with Rory to harmless, friendly banter. This didn't mean anything.

"Well. So no song for you, then," Rory replied softly.

"No," Logan said, duly chastised. "You'd better rest, Rory. I'll let you go."

I'll let you go.

"Wait—" Rory sputtered. She berated herself for seeming quite desperate. But was she not justified by this being their last conversation?

"Yeah?" He can wait.

"Well…uh, what are you doing? In your office. On a Sunday." Lame. Desperate.

"Hm, thought I had told you. I'm hosting this week's Jane Austen Book Club," his voice dropped in register. "Pointers? We're doing Emma."

"A single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any..." She stopped her nearly involuntary response as Logan laughed.

"Wow. Talk about self-revelation and the meaning of life."

"Logan, that was a serious question."

"Seriously, then. Just work. As usual." He turned somber, looking out at the crisp winter sunshine that shone muted through his tinted windows. "I can't remember the last time I spent a Sunday otherwise."

"Hm, hope is not lost, I'll have you waxing philosophical about your life, yet. Congratulations on becoming CEO of HPG, by the way. It caused quite a stir where I work."

"It's causing a stir where I work." He involuntarily emitted an audible groan as he swivelled to face his computer once more. "I don't think they like me, Ror," he muttered. "Or at least they won't after I've presented my plans for the coming year." Just then, he sounded every bit the 32 year-old CEO neophyte that he was.

"They? You can't be talking of your battalion of adoring automatons, are you?"

"The Board. I'm recommending that some of our papers be let go, and our regional partners need some major reorganizing. I want us to reassess our priorities and focus our resources on online technologies. I just don't know how ready they—we—are for all this change."

"Well, you don't need them to like you. You need to do your job, and they need you and the company to do well. Change can be painful, but necessary. We're all expecting you to rock the journalism world."

"And that's supposed to be comforting? Hey, I hear The Times is among the top ten in presence on the Web. I should be wringing trade secrets from Assistant Editor you."

"Ha, you wish. That would take more than bottled water from the French Alps, mister. I wish I knew trade secrets. But I'm just a humble pawn…"

And so Rory and Logan spoke of cereals, then of work, of nothing, but also, everything. There was no mention of the past, nor any hint of the future, and the Monroes—so instrumental in their accidental reunion—had no place in this perfect, last conversation. They were fearless in their friendliness and flirtatiousness; his impending marriage made them so. Engrossed as they were in this Sunday telephone call, she in her bed and he at his desk, neither were prepared for the rude awakening that was to come in the form of a sing-song—

"Logan, babe! Ready for lunch?"

Louisa swept into Logan's office bearing shopping bags from Saks.

Rory was in the middle of regaling Logan with a picturesque description of the terracotta-orange paint of her living room walls, and had stopped at mid-sentence at the sound of Louisa's voice. Her words, her thoughts, her feelings were effectively doused as if by extremely cold water. She drew her blankets up to her chest in newfound chilly silence, as the sound in her ear grew muffled. Logan had covered his mouthpiece with his hand and was telling Louisa something that Rory could not make out.

"Hey there—not quite ready. Can you give me five minutes to finish this call?"

"Sure, hon. I need to go to the loo anyway. I totally forget to do these things when I'm in the zone." Before leaving the room, she skipped to Logan and gave him a loud smack on his cheek.

Which Rory did hear, unfortunately.

How sorely tempted she was to quietly put the phone down. Just hang up, Rory. She did not realize how happy she had been in the last hour, until she became aware of it now being swallowed up in the black hole gaping in her chest. She had, in fact, put the phone down on her lap. It was as if Louisa had kissed her goodbye.

"Rory? Rory! Are you still there?" Logan was whispering loudly, worriedly.

She picked it up again. "Yes. I didn't realize it was time for lunch. I should get some, too." She strove for normalcy, as normal as lunch.

"Okay."

"Okay. Bye now."

"Rory—you know about the ski trip next weekend, right? David told you?" With Louisa now in the picture, the mention of David followed in rapid succession. They jostled and crowded in the phone.

"Oh right, yeah. He mentioned it to me."

"Are you coming?"

"I wasn't planning to. I don't relish the prospect of broken bones so soon after this." (My flu. My broken heart.) The prospect of the four of them being together for an entire weekend (to ski, at that) was nothing short of horrific to her.

Damn. He knew it. Logan ran his hand through his hair in inexplicable, deep frustration. He could hear the toilet flush; Louisa would soon be coming out.

"Please—please Rory, just go on the trip. Go skiing."

His words came out quickly, tripping over each other in a rush, running towards some unreachable solace, or away from a rabid pursuer.

"But I don't think I—"

"I want you to go. Please. I just want you to go."

The line went dead, Logan having shut the phone without knowing whether he had been able to persuade Rory. He meant to persuade her not to let this be their last time.

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Their first meeting in Milsom-street afforded much to be said, but the concert still more. That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite moments. The moment of her stepping forward in the octagon-room to speak to him, the moment of Mr. Elliot's appearing and tearing her away, and one or two subsequent moments, marked by returning hope or increasing despondence, were dwelt on with energy. - Chapter XXIII

"Your manner might be only the ease which your engagement to another man would give. I left you in this belief; and yet--I was determined to see you again. My spirits rallied with the morning, and I felt that I had still a motive for remaining here." - F.W.