This probable desire of Charlotte's for love and marriage in itself, apart from him, thrilled his male fancy with a certain holy awe and respect, from his love for her and utter ignorance of the attitude of womankind.

Then, too, he reflected that Thomas Payne would probably make her a good husband.
"He can buy her everything she wants," he thought, with a curious mixture of gratulation for her and agony on his own account.

He thought of the little bonnets he had meant to buy for her himself, and these details pierced his heart like needles.

He sobbed, and the birch-tree quivered in a wind of human grief.

He saw Charlotte going to church in her bridal bonnet with Thomas Payne more plainly than he could ever see her in life, for a torturing imagination reflects life like a magnifying-glass, and makes it clearer and larger than reality.