Austen Said:

Patterns of Diction in Jane Austen's Major Novels

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"I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for a lady's maid, I am sure I can't tell. She is an excellent housemaid, and works very well at her needle. However, you will think of all that at your leisure."
"Well, my dear,"
"I sent you up the young man. Did not I do right? — And I suppose you had no great difficulty — You did not find him very unwilling to accept your proposal?"
"Well, and how soon will he be ready? — For it seems all to depend upon that."
"Two or three months!"
"Lord! my dear, how calmly you talk of it; and can the Colonel wait two or three months! Lord bless me! — I am sure it would put ME quite out of patience! — And though one would be very glad to do a kindness by poor Mr. Ferrars, I do think it is not worth while to wait two or three months for him. Sure somebody else might be found that would do as well; somebody that is in orders already."
"Lord bless you, my dear! — Sure you do not mean to persuade me that the Colonel only marries you for the sake of giving ten guineas to Mr. Ferrars!"
"Aye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one,"
"and very likely MAY be out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I thought, for a house that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on the ground-floor, and I think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds! — and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage! — It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must touch up the Colonel to do some thing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable for them, before Lucy goes to it."
"The Colonel is a ninny, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less. Take my word for it, that, if I am alive, I shall be paying a visit at Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas; and I am sure I shan't go if Lucy an't there."
'It would have been beyond comparison,'
'the least evil of the two, and she would be glad to compound NOW for nothing worse.'
one of the happiest women in the world.
Marianne was restored to her from a danger in which,
her own mistaken judgment in encouraging the unfortunate attachment to Willoughby, had contributed to place her;
"At last we are alone. My Elinor, you do not yet know all my happiness. Colonel Brandon loves Marianne. He has told me so himself."
"You are never like me, dear Elinor, or I should wonder at your composure now. Had I sat down to wish for any possible good to my family, I should have fixed on Colonel Brandon's marrying one of you as the object most desirable. And I believe Marianne will be the most happy with him of the two."
"He opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled. It came out quite unawares, quite undesignedly. I, you may well believe, could talk of nothing but my child; — he could not conceal his distress; I saw that it equalled my own, and he perhaps, thinking that mere friendship, as the world now goes, would not justify so warm a sympathy — or rather, not thinking at all, I suppose — giving way to irresistible feelings, made me acquainted with his earnest, tender, constant, affection for Marianne. He has loved her, my Elinor, ever since the first moment of seeing her."
"His regard for her, infinitely surpassing anything that Willoughby ever felt or feigned, as much more warm, as more sincere or constant — which ever we are to call it — has subsisted through all the knowledge of dear Marianne's unhappy prepossession for that worthless young man! — and without selfishness — without encouraging a hope! — could he have seen her happy with another — Such a noble mind! — such openness, such sincerity! — no one can be deceived in HIM."
"I know it is," —
"or after such a warning, I should be the last to encourage such affection, or even to be pleased by it. But his coming for me as he did, with such active, such ready friendship, is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men."
"Oh! my love, I could not then talk of hope to him or to myself. Marianne might at that moment be dying. But he did not ask for hope or encouragement. His was an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible effusion to a soothing friend — not an application to a parent. Yet after a time I DID say, for at first I was quite overcome — that if she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every encouragement in my power. Time, a very little time, I tell him, will do everything; — Marianne's heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Willoughby. — His own merits must soon secure it."
"No. — He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her. There, however, he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed; — and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy. And his person, his manners too, are all in his favour. My partiality does not blind me; he certainly is not so handsome as Willoughby — but at the same time, there is something much more pleasing in his countenance. — There was always a something, — if you remember, — in Willoughby's eyes at times, which I did not like."
"And his manners, the Colonel's manners are not only more pleasing to me than Willoughby's ever were, but they are of a kind I well know to be more solidly attaching to Marianne. Their gentleness, their genuine attention to other people, and their manly unstudied simplicity is much more accordant with her real disposition, than the liveliness — often artificial, and often ill-timed of the other. I am very sure myself, that had Willoughby turned out as really amiable, as he has proved himself the contrary, Marianne would yet never have been so happy with HIM, as she will be with Colonel Brandon."
"At Delaford, she will be within an easy distance of me,"
"even if I remain at Barton; and in all probability, — for I hear it is a large village, — indeed there certainly MUST be some small house or cottage close by, that would suit us quite as well as our present situation."
"His fortune too! — for at my time of life you know, everybody cares about THAT; — and though I neither know nor desire to know, what it really is, I am sure it must be a good one."
something more than gratitude already dawned.
she was sorry for him; — she wished him happy.
"I know it — I know it,"
"Happy with a man of libertine practices! — With one who so injured the peace of the dearest of our friends, and the best of men! — No — my Marianne has not a heart to be made happy with such a man! — Her conscience, her sensitive conscience, would have felt all that the conscience of her husband ought to have felt."
"Rather say your mother's imprudence, my child,"
"SHE must be answerable."
"Who told you that Mr. Ferrars was married, Thomas?"
"But did she tell you she was married, Thomas?"
"Was Mr. Ferrars in the carriage with her?"
"Was there no one else in the carriage?"
"Do you know where they came from?"
"And are they going farther westward?"
"Did you see them off, before you came away?"
"Did Mrs. Ferrars look well?"
every thing had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then had suffered for Marianne.
she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be.
she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her Elinor;
— that Marianne's affliction, because more acknowledged, more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude.
"I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to hear from him again. I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should not be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day."
to hope that he had left Mrs. Ferrars very well.
"I do think,"
"nothing was ever carried on so sly; for it was but two days before Lucy called and sat a couple of hours with me. Not a soul suspected anything of the matter, not even Nancy, who, poor soul! came crying to me the day after, in a great fright for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, as well as not knowing how to get to Plymouth; for Lucy it seems borrowed all her money before she went off to be married, on purpose we suppose to make a show with, and poor Nancy had not seven shillings in the world; — so I was very glad to give her five guineas to take her down to Exeter, where she thinks of staying three or four weeks with Mrs. Burgess, in hopes, as I tell her, to fall in with the Doctor again. And I must say that Lucy's crossness not to take them along with them in the chaise is worse than all. Poor Mr. Edward! I cannot get him out of my head, but you must send for him to Barton, and Miss Marianne must try to comfort him."