第66章

Mine is a misery which nothing can do away.""You must not talk so, Marianne.Have you no comforts? no friends? Is your loss such as leaves no opening for consolation? Much as you suffer now, think of what you would have suffered if the discovery of his character had been delayed to a later period--if your engagement had been carried on for months and months, as it might have been, before he chose to put an end to it.

Every additional day of unhappy confidence, on your side, would have made the blow more dreadful.""Engagement!" cried Marianne, "there has been no engagement.""No engagement!"

"No, he is not so unworthy as you believe him.

He has broken no faith with me."

"But he told you that he loved you."

"Yes--no--never absolutely.It was every day implied, but never professedly declared.Sometimes I thought it had been--but it never was.""Yet you wrote to him?"--

"Yes--could that be wrong after all that had passed?--But I cannot talk."

Elinor said no more, and turning again to the three letters which now raised a much stronger curiosity than before, directly ran over the contents of all.

The first, which was what her sister had sent him on their arrival in town, was to this effect.

Berkeley Street, January.

"How surprised you will be, Willoughby, on receiving this; and I think you will feel something more than surprise, when you know that I am in town.

An opportunity of coming hither, though with Mrs.

Jennings, was a temptation we could not resist.

I wish you may receive this in time to come here to-night, but I will not depend on it.

At any rate I shall expect you to-morrow.For the present, adieu.

"M.D."

Her second note, which had been written on the morning after the dance at the Middletons', was in these words:--"I cannot express my disappointment in having missed you the day before yesterday, nor my astonishment at not having received any answer to a note which I sent you above a week ago.I have been expecting to hear from you, and still more to see you, every hour of the day.Pray call again as soon as possible, and explain the reason of my having expected this in vain.You had better come earlier another time, because we are generally out by one.

We were last night at Lady Middleton's, where there was a dance.

I have been told that you were asked to be of the party.But could it be so? You must be very much altered indeed since we parted, if that could be the case, and you not there.But I will not suppose this possible, and I hope very soon to receive your personal assurance of its being otherwise.

"M.D."

The contents of her last note to him were these:--"What am I to imagine, Willoughby, by your behaviour last night? Again I demand an explanation of it.I was prepared to meet you with the pleasure which our separation naturally produced, with the familiarity which our intimacy at Barton appeared to me to justify.I was repulsed indeed!

I have passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse a conduct which can scarcely be called less than insulting; but though I have not yet been able to form any reasonable apology for your behaviour, I am perfectly ready to hear your justification of it.You have perhaps been misinformed, or purposely deceived, in something concerning me, which may have lowered me in your opinion.Tell me what it is, explain the grounds on which you acted, and I shall be satisfied, in being able to satisfy you.

It would grieve me indeed to be obliged to think ill of you; but if I am to do it, if I am to learn that you are not what we have hitherto believed you, that your regard for us all was insincere, that your behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let it be told as soon as possible.My feelings are at present in a state of dreadful indecision;I wish to acquit you, but certainty on either side will be ease to what I now suffer.If your sentiments are no longer what they were, you will return my notes, and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.

"M.D."

That such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have been so answered, Elinor, for Willoughby's sake, would have been unwilling to believe.But her condemnation of him did not blind her to the impropriety of their having been written at all; and she was silently grieving over the imprudence which had hazarded such unsolicited proofs of tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding, and most severely condemned by the event, when Marianne, perceiving that she had finished the letters, observed to her that they contained nothing but what any one would have written in the same situation.