“Exert yourself, dear Marianne,” she cried, “if you would not kill yourself and all who love you. Think of your mother; think of her misery while you suffer; for her sake you must exert yourself.”
“I cannot, I cannot,” cried Marianne; “leave me, leave me if I distress you; leave me, hate me, forget me! But do not torture me so. Oh! how easy for those who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion! Happy, happy Elinor, you cannot have an idea of what I suffer.”
“Do you call me happy, Marianne? Ah! if you knew! And can you believe me to be so, while I see you so wretched!”
“Forgive me, forgive me,” throwing her arms round her sister’s neck; “I know you feel for me; I know what a heart you have; but yet you are—you must be happy; Edward loves you—What, oh! what can do away such happiness as that?”
“Many, many circumstances,” said Elinor solemnly.
“No, no, no,” cried Marianne wildly, “he loves you and only you .You can have no grief.”
“I can have no pleasure while I see you in this state.”
“And you will never see me otherwise. 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..
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