There was one dear friend,--as a
friend dearer than any other,--to whom he might go, and who would
after some fashion bid him prosper. Mabel would encourage him. She
had said that she would do so. But in making that promise she had
told him that Romeo would not have spoken of his love for Juliet
to Rosaline, whom he had loved before he saw Juliet. No doubt she
had gone on to tell him that he might come to her and talk freely
of his love for Lady Mary,--but after what had been said before he
felt that he could not do so without leaving a sting behind. When
a man's heart goes well with him,--so well as to be in some degree
oppressive to him even by its prosperity,--when the young lady has
jumped into his arms, and the father and the mother have been
quite willing, then he wants no confidant. He does not care to
speak very much off the matter which among his friends is apt to
become a subject for raillery. When you call a man Benedict he
does not come to you with ecstatic descriptions of the beauty and
the wit of his Beatrice. But no one was likely to call him
Benedict in reference to Lady Mary.
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