Richard's justification to himself would be this.

So I went up to London to see Richard, who now lived in Symond's Inn,
and my darling Ada went with me. He was poring over a table covered with
dusty papers, but he received us very affectionately.

I noticed, as he passed his two hands over his head, how sunken and how
large his eyes appeared, and how dry his lips were. He spoke of the case
half-hopefully, half-despondently, "Either the suit must be ended,
Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit--the suit." Then he took
a few turns up and down, and sank upon the sofa. "I get so tired," he
said gloomily. "It is such weary, weary work."

"Esther, dear," Ada said, very quietly, "I am not going home again.
Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have been
married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I shall
never go home any more."

I often came to Richard and his wife, and I often met Mr. Woodcourt
there. Richard still suspected my guardian, and refused to see him, and
when I said this was so unreasonable, my guardian only said, "What shall
we find reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce? Unreason and injustice from
beginning to end, if it ever has an end. How should poor Rick, always
hovering near it, pluck reason out of it?"

It was some months after this when Mr. Woodcourt asked me to be his
wife, and I had to tell him I was not free. But I had to tell him that I
could never forget how proud and glad I was at having been beloved by
him.