In the film, there's a scene
Jane Austen: [after Tom loses a boxing match] Forgive me if I suspect in you a sense of justice.
Tom Lefroy: I am a lawyer. Justice plays no part in the law.
Jane Austen: Is that what you believe?
Tom Lefroy: I believe it. I must.
I do not really understand the meaning of the above dialogue.
What is the behind meaning of it?
Is it after this, Jane started to love Tom?
I'm not exactly sure why she asks for his forgiveness for suspecting a sense of justice in him, but I think she has already fallen in love with him before the boxing scene. At the beginning of the film when Tom walks in late, interrupting her reading, she appears to be flustered and has a hard time getting started again. Then, when she overhears him making an unflattering remark about her writing (like Lizzie and Darcy: "she's tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me"), she becomes very upset, goes to her room and rips up the papers she just read. To me, it looks like she must have been attracted to him from the start, otherwise she wouldn't care so much about what he thinks about her. She gradually falls for him, like Lizzie did with Mr. Darcy.
shareShe's not literally asking for his forgiveness. It's a manner of speaking.
shareWitty banter. She asked why did he do it, if to stop that other poor man from getting beaten to a pulp, she thought he did it for that reason. He was being modest by saying it was for another reason, not to waste all that money that went to boxing lessons. He probably did it to boast, to show off.
shareI think Tom was trying to deflect his good intentions in helping the man by giving a snide reply to Jane about there being no justice in the law, trying to be cynical to cover up his good deed.
Then Jane questioned him further And Tom, by saying "I believe it, I must," he was revealing a teeny tiny bit of himself, like maybe all his sarcasm and contempt for the law was not his true feelings really and he had to keep up the charade of pretending he doesn't really care about anything. '
Just my take on it. I think Jane was starting to get to him and he retreated back to the "bad boy" facade. We know from the latter part of the movie that he was giving a lot of his money to help his family back home and actually had a lot of duty, love and compassion in him. He wasn't revealing that part of himself to Jane yet.
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