She confined herself, or tried to confine herself, to the simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure.

The mother's sufferings, the father's; there she paused.

Julia's, Tom's, Edmund's; there a yet longer pause.

They were the two on whom it would fall most horribly.

Sir Thomas's parental solicitude and high sense of honour and decorum, Edmund's upright principles, unsuspicious temper, and genuine strength of feeling, made her think it scarcely possible for them to support life and reason under such disgrace; and it appeared to her that, as far as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing to every one of kindred with Mrs.Rushworth would be instant annihilation.
Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken her terrors.