Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy.

(He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; _that_ seemed to him natural enough.) Still there was just the chance, Godfrey thought, that his father's pride might see this marriage in a light that would induce him to hush it up, rather than turn his son out and make the family the talk of the country for ten miles round.
This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him pretty closely till midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that he had done with inward debating.

But when he awoke in the still morning darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts; it was as if they had been tired out and were not to be roused to further work.

Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the presence of nothing but its evil consequences: the old dread of disgrace came back--the old shrinking from the thought of raising a hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy--the old disposition to rely on chances which might be favourable to him, and save him from betrayal.

Why, after all, should he cut off the hope of them by his own act?
He had seen the matter in a wrong light yesterday.