her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw her into violent distress.  He felt the situation acutely, felt the sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future.  That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he could evade by hopeful self-persuasion.  The whole thing had been secret; the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion.  No one, except Adam, knew anything of what had passed—­no one else was likely to know; for Arthur had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray it.  It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings of evil that might never come.  The temporary sadness for Hetty was the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable.  But—­but Hetty might have had the trouble in some other way if not in this.  And perhaps hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her for all the tears she would shed about him.  She would owe the advantage of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now.  So good comes out of evil.  Such is the beautiful arrangement of things!

Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any more positive offence as possible for it?—­who thought that his own self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion?  The same, I assure you, only under different conditions.  Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.  There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile him to the change, for this reason—­that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right.  The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike.  Europe adjusts itself to a fait accompli, and so does an individual character—­until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.