“I was hers in honour if she wished it.” (Chapter 23)

I have always believed that absenting himself was the most honorable of his options at this point. If he stays he has the problem of how he is to act towards her, he cannot very well act as he did before her fall—there have been too many personal revelations, too much awareness of the folly of his indiscriminate attentions. If he stays the probability that he will hurt Louisa is much higher than if he leaves under the guise of obligation to his brother and after all he can communicate by letter to either of the captains an appropriate sense of interest in the state of her recovery, it need not be a complete abandonment. What follows is much speculation on the results of actions never taken by our beloved Captain:

What if:

--he stayed and upon Louisa awakening she found him distant and reluctant to engage in their old intimacies, she could easily be hurt and feel misused by him and so others might think also. How fickle or callus he would seem to them. He could do this as it would be much like his treatment of Anne up to Lyme, the only difference would be that no one else knows of Anne and his past and everyone knows of his and Louisa’s. He does not have the anger to act in this ungracious way to Louisa, I am sure he would now find it quite repellent, at this point he is already regretting his treatment of Anne.

--he stayed and pretended to vie for her affections with Captain Benwick, playing a part, slowly becoming less agreeable, less enthusiastic, until she chooses another would be quite disingenuous of him and I do not think it is really in his character to ever pull it off. It is much more akin to what Mr. Elliot might do if he cared to play this kind of mean charade for his own amusement.

--he stayed and said anything at all to imply the real depth, or lack of his affections to her or to anyone else he would be considered a cold-hearted cad after all his perceived attentions to her and folks might assume that her injury was what lessened his regard. Assuredly he has no right to break her heart in this manner, especially now that she may never be as she once was.