“He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, and lets his eyes rest on her. I am inclined to think that she don't care for him quite so much as he does for her. She's not a particular warm-hearted creature to my thinking, though she cares for him pretty middling much-- as much as she's able to; and he could make her heart ache a bit if he liked to try--which he's too simple to do.”

“It was as if she saw him in a whole new way, as if he had magically been transformed into a new person. Perhaps what she could really see, or wanted so very much to see, was how much he cared for her. Not that he wanted something from her, but that he wanted to see to it that she was happy, that she was taken care of, that that was what he truly wanted. And in that instant, it made her love him.”

“He clasped her fingers, not so she could pull him up but clearly because he wanted to touch them. She wanted it too, way too much, and then he stood there right in front of her, the abyss beside them, and she could smell his skin and his hair, and let go of his hand, even though she secretly wanted something quite different.”

“Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of some former sentiment, it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.”

“She cared about him too much, and he was a dangerous person to love. He wouldn't love her back.”

“He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell her how much she had come to mean to him. She could destroy him with her rejection. If she had feigned her feelings for him – if he’d bought into her lies and her quest for freedom…. He wasn’t sure what he would do. He could hurt her." Caleb.”