As he went along his heart was warmer towards Grace than it had ever been before.

He had told himself that he was now bound to abstain, for his father's sake, from doing that which he had told his father that he would certainly do.

But he knew also, that he had said that which, though it did not bind him to Miss Crawley, gave her a right to expect that he would so bind himself.
And Miss Prettyman could not but be aware of what his intention had been, and could not but expect that he should now be explicit.

Had he been a wise man altogether, he would probably have abstained from saying anything at the present moment,--a wise man, that is, in the ways and feelings of the world in such matters.

But, as there are men who will allow themselves all imaginable latitude in their treatment of women, believing that the world will condone any amount of fault of that nature, so are there other men, and a class of men which on the whole is the more numerous of the two, who are tremblingly alive to the danger of censure on this head,--and to the danger of censure not only from others, but from themselves also.