He felt that he had lost her.

Lost her when he had just won her! He felt it, without realizing it.

The first blows of an immense grief are dull, and strike the heart through wool, as it were.

The belief of the young in their sorrow has to be flogged into them, on the good old educational principle.

Could he do less than this he was about to do?
Rose had wedded her noble nature to him, and it was as much her spirit as his own that urged him thus to forfeit her, to be worthy of her by assuming unworthiness.
There he sat neither conning over his determination nor the cause for it, revolving Rose's words about Laxley, and nothing else.