A certain languid fatigue which had been with him from boyhood, which had always lain mournfully on its back waving its legs in the air like a reversed Battle, had now been jolted right side upper-most, and was using those legs, not as proofs of the emptiness of the world, but as a means of locomotion.
He had at first been enormously raised in his own self-esteem by his engagement to a young and beautiful woman.

He was permanently relieved from the necessity of accounting to his friends for the fact that he was still unmarried, reminding them that it was his own fault.

Perhaps at the bottom of his heart a fear lurked, implanted by the brutal Grenfell, that he was going to be an old maid.

That fear was now dispelled.

It was mercifully hidden from Wentworth that Grenfell and the Bishop and most of his so-called friends would still so regard him even if he were married.
But gradually and insensibly the many petty reasons for satisfaction which his engagement to Fay had given him, and even the delight in being loved, were overshadowed by a greater presence.
At first they had never been silent together.