He scoffs at the monks who claim that the plague is divine punishment and pities the penitence with their crosses and relics whipping themselves census with scourges.
But she had no thought of penitence before God; nothing but chaos and night surrounded the one lurid fact that, in Mr. Thornton's eyes, she was degraded.
She seems sensible of her fault; The excess of her grief proves her penitence, and I am convinced that her tears flow more from contrition than fear of punishment.