She had made a discovery--one which to a girl of honest nature was
almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that
her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized
into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was
great and little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her
acquired tastes; his comparative want of so-called culture did not
now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye;
his exterior roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by
marriage how much that was humanly not great could co-exist with
attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her
sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind:
honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only
existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and
here was one who had manifested them towards her from his youth
up.
There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles
as a man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in
his worldly transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity,
he had, like Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing
"As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.
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