What was to be his fate here and hereafter?
Lily Dale was gone from him, and Amelia Roper was hanging round his neck like a mill-stone! What, under such circumstances, was to be his fate here and hereafter?
We may say that the difficulties in his way were not as yet very great.

As to Lily, indeed, he had no room for hope; but, then, his love for Lily had, perhaps, been a sentiment rather than a passion.
Most young men have to go through that disappointment, and are enabled to bear it without much injury to their prospects or happiness.

And in after-life the remembrance of such love is a blessing rather than a curse, enabling the possessor of it to feel that in those early days there was something within him of which he had no cause to be ashamed.

I do not pity John Eames much in regard to Lily Dale.

And then, as to Amelia Roper,--had he achieved but a tithe of that lady's experience in the world, or possessed a quarter of her audacity, surely such a difficulty as that need not have stood much in his way! What could Amelia do to him if he fairly told her that he was not minded to marry her?
In very truth he had never promised to do so.