It may be proper to conceal their engagement (if they ARE engaged) from Mrs.
"I want no proof of their affection," said Elinor; "but of their engagement I do."
She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the
engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it; and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs, without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be reasonably calculated on.
"But you implied just now that the engagement must be broken off."
"Can you break an engagement off slowly?" Her eyes lit up.
Miss Pink wrote word of the engagement to Moody first; reserving to a later day the superior pleasure of informing Lady Lydiard of the very event which that audacious woman had declared to be impossible.
The letter was nothing less than Lady Lydiard's reply to the written announcement of Isabel's engagement, despatched on the previous day by Miss Pink.
My brother is a lively and perhaps sometimes a thoughtless young man; he has had about a week's acquaintance with your friend, and he has known her
engagement almost as long as he has known her."
Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of money.
Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at this moment.
In my dauntless zeal for her welfare, I ran the great risk, and openly alluded to her marriage engagement.
Well, she has taken a sudden resolution to break the engagement. Reflection has convinced her that she will best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash promise, and leaving me free to make some happier choice elsewhere.
My mother and my sister, what would they feel when I returned to them from my broken
engagement, with the confession of my miserable secret--they who had parted from me so hopefully on that last happy night in the Hampstead cottage!
Princess Mary was the same as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her satisfaction that the
engagement had been broken off.
"And do you really believe the affair to have been carrying on with such perfect secresy?The Campbells, the Dixons, did none of them know of the
engagement?"
