And yet how could it possibly be so?
How could it be that she should not despise a man,--despise him if she did not hate him,--who had behaved as this man had behaved to her?
It was now four years since this Crosbie had been engaged to Miss Dale, and had jilted her so heartlessly as to incur the disgust of every man in London who had heard the story.

He had married an earl's daughter, who had left him within a few months of their marriage, and now Mr.Crosbie's noble wife was dead.

The wife was dead, and simply because the man was free again, he, John Eames, was to be told that Miss Dale's mind was "disturbed," and that her thoughts were going back to things which had faded from her memory, and which should have been long since banished altogether from such holy ground.
If Lily Dale were now to marry Mr.Crosbie, anything so perversely cruel as the fate of John Eames would never yet have been told in romance.

That was his own idea on the matter as he sat smoking his cigar.

I have said that he was proud of his constancy, and yet, in some sort, he was also ashamed of it.