Austen Said:

"Did you tell her that you should soon return?"

"Well, sir,"

"and this is all?"

"Yes, I saw every note that passed."

"This is not right, Mr. Willoughby. — Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear."

"Watched us out of the house!"

"We are assured of it."

"But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing to say about that?"

"Your wife! — The letter was in your own hand-writing."

"You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable,"

"you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne — nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience."

"Yes, you have certainly removed something — a little. — You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know — the misery that you have inflicted — I hardly know what could have made it worse."

"I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness."

on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain — Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature.

"Are you going back to town?"

she did; — that she forgave, pitied, wished him well — was even interested in his happiness —

"What do you mean?"

"You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now."

Willoughby, he, whom only half an hour ago she had abhorred as the most worthless of men, Willoughby, in spite of all his faults, excited a degree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them,

now separated for ever from her family, with a tenderness, a regret, rather in proportion,

— to his wishes than to his merits.

his influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it was no merit to possess; and by that still ardent love for Marianne, which it was not even innocent to indulge.

it was so, long, long before she could feel his influence less.

"poor Willoughby,"

to HIS sufferings and his constancy far more than to his rival's, the reward of her sister was due,

whether her mother ever recollected Edward.

satisfied that none founded on an impartial consideration of their age, characters, or feelings, could be given; — but her mother must always be carried away by her imagination on any interesting subject,

"Colonel Brandon's character,"

"as an excellent man, is well established."

"His character, however,"

"does not rest on ONE act of kindness, to which his affection for Marianne, were humanity out of the case, would have prompted him. To Mrs. Jennings, to the Middletons, he has been long and intimately known; they equally love and respect him; and even my own knowledge of him, though lately acquired, is very considerable; and so highly do I value and esteem him, that if Marianne can be happy with him, I shall be as ready as yourself to think our connection the greatest blessing to us in the world. What answer did you give him? — Did you allow him to hope?"

"To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, you have not yet made him equally sanguine."

was such, as,

must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others;

an apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as she trusted of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to contentment and cheerfulness.

That would not do. —

she should in future practice much.

"When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength,"

"we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will walk to Sir John's new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland; and we will often go the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want."

the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control.

promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy tranquillity.

"There, exactly there," —

"on that projecting mound, — there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby."

"I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the spot! — shall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor?" —

"Or will it be wrong? — I can talk of it now, I hope, as I ought to do." —

"As for regret,"

"I have done with that, as far as HE is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been for him, but what they are NOW. — At present, if I could be satisfied on one point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not ALWAYS acting a part, not ALWAYS deceiving me; — but above all, if I could be assured that he never was so VERY wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since the story of that unfortunate girl" —

"If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy."

"Yes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it; — for not only is it horrible to suspect a person, who has been what HE has been to ME, of such designs, — but what must it make me appear to myself? — What in a situation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could expose me to" —

"How then,"