When we discover that we can be no longer true, the next best
is to be kind. I daresay he came away from that interview
not very content, but with a glorious conscience; and as he
went homeward, he would sing his favourite, "How are Thy
servants blest, O Lord!" Jean, on the other hand, armed with
her "lines," confided her position to the master-mason, her
father, and his wife. Burns and his brother were then in a
fair way to ruin themselves in their farm; the poet was an
execrable match for any well-to-do country lass; and perhaps
old Armour had an inkling of a previous attachment on his
daughter's part. At least, he was not so much incensed by
her slip from virtue as by the marriage which had been
designed to cover it. Of this he would not hear a word.
Jean, who had besought the acknowledgment only to appease her
parents, and not at all from any violent inclination to the
poet, readily gave up the paper for destruction; and all
parties imagined, although wrongly, that the marriage was
thus dissolved. To a proud man like Burns here was a
crushing blow. The concession which had been wrung from his
pity was now publicly thrown back in his teeth. The Armour
family preferred disgrace to his connection. Since the
promise, besides, he had doubtless been busy "battering
himself" back again into his affection for the girl; and the
blow would not only take him in his vanity, but wound him at
the heart.
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