It would ignore, after the exalted habit of sentiment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starvation (who ever heard of a woman of good family starving in Virginia ?), and, at last, if Gabriella were really in love with Arthur, it would triumph over her finer judgment and reduce her to submission.

But while she watched him, in the very minute when, failing for words, he caught her in his arms, she said to herself, suddenly chilled and determined: "I must get it over to-night, and I've got to be honest." The scent of the hyacinths floated to her again, but it seemed to bring a cold wind, as if a draught had blown in through the closed slats of the shutters.
"Everything has changed, Arthur," she said, "and I don't think I ought to go on being engaged." Then because her words sounded insincere, she added sternly: "Even if we could be married--and of course we can't be--I--I don't feel that I should want to marry.

I am not sure that I love you enough to marry you." It was all so unromantic, so unemotional, so utterly different from the scene she had pictured when she imagined what "breaking her engagement" would be like.

Then she had always thought of herself as dissolving in tears on the horsehair sofa, which had become sacred to the tragedy of poor Jane; but, to her surprise, she did not feel now the faintest inclination to cry.

It ought to have been theatrical, but it wasn't--not even when she took off her engagement ring, as she had read in novels that girls did at the decisive instant, and laid it down on the table.
When she remembered this afterwards, it appeared rather foolish, but Arthur seemed not to notice it, and when Marthy came in to light the fire in the morning, she found the ring lying on a copy of Gray's Elegy and brought it back to Gabriella.
"I'll never give you up," said Arthur stubbornly, and knowing his character, she felt that he had spoken the truth.