Marianne, however, who had never much toleration for anything like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, soon checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side by the coldness of her behaviour towards them; but Elinor, from politeness, submitted to the attentions of both, but especially to those of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank communication of her sentiments, until one day, as they were walking together from the Park to the cottage, she asked Elinor if she were personally acquainted with Mrs. John Dashwood's mother, Mrs. Ferrars, and, in explanation of her question, proceeded to confound her by confessing that she knew Mr. Edward Ferrars, who had been at one time under the care of her uncle, Mr. Pratt, at Longstaple, near Plymouth, and that she had been engaged to him for the last four years.
Distressed by this news, which she was quite aware that Lucy had confided to her merely from jealousy and suspicion, indignant at Edward's duplicity, though convinced of his genuine attachment to herself, Elinor resolved not to give pain to her mother and sister by telling them of the engagement. Indeed, her attention was soon withdrawn from her own to her sister's love affairs by an invitation which Mrs. Jennings gave the two girls to spend a few weeks with her in town at her house near Portman Square, an invitation which was accepted by Marianne in the hope of seeing Willoughby, and by Elinor with the intention of looking after Marianne. Mrs. Jennings' party was three days on the road, and arrived in Berkeley Street at three o'clock in the afternoon, in time to allow Marianne to write a brief note to Willoughby. But he failed to appear that evening; and when a loud knock at the door resulted in Colonel Brandon being admitted instead, she found the shock of disappointment too great to be borne with calmness, and left the room.
As it happened, a full week elapsed before she discovered, by finding his card on the table, that her lover had arrived in town. Even then she could not see him. He failed to call the next morning, and though invited to dine on the following day with the Middletons in Conduit Street, he neglected to put in an appearance. Which strange conduct moved Marianne to send another note to him; and Elinor to write to her mother, entreating her to demand from Marianne an account of her real situation with respect to him.
A meeting between Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby at last took place at a fashionable party, where the latter greeted the two sisters with great coldness and reluctance; and a third letter from Marianne, now frantic with grief, elicited a reply from him in which he announced his engagement to another lady, "reproached himself for not having been more guarded in his professions of esteem for Marianne, and returned, with great regret, the lock of her hair which she had so obligingly bestowed on him."
A day or two later Colonel Brandon called on Elinor to give her certain information about Willoughby. He told her that his sudden departure from Devonshire to London, which had surprised his friends so much, had been due to an affecting letter he had received from his ward, Miss Williams, the natural daughter of a beloved sister-in-law. Willoughby had met this lady--a pretty girl of sixteen--at Bath, and, after a guilty intimacy, had abandoned her. Colonel Brandon had gone to her rescue and to fight a bloodless duel with her betrayer.
III.--Matrimonial Intrigues
One day Elinor and Marianne were at Gray's, in Sackville Street, carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few old-fashioned jewels belonging to their mother, when they came upon their half-brother, Mr. John Dashwood. He paid a visit to Mrs. Jennings the next day, and came with a pretence of an apology for his wife not coming, too. To his sisters his manners, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity that seemed to say that he only wanted to know him to be rich to be equally civil to him. After staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to walk with him to Conduit Street, and to introduce him to Sir John and Lady Middleton; and as soon as they were out of the house he began to make inquiries about Colonel Brandon. Which inquiries having elicited the satisfactory information that the gentleman had a good property at Delaford Park, in Dorsetshire, Mr. Dashwood--indifferent to his sister's disclaimers--proceeded to congratulate her on the prospect of a very respectable establishment in life, to insist that the objections to a prior attachment on her side were not insurmountable, and to inform her that the object of that attachment--Mr. Edward Ferrars--was likely to be married to Miss Morton, a peer's daughter, with thirty thousand pounds of her own.
Mrs. John Dashwood had so much confidence in her husband's judgment that she waited the very next day on both Mrs. Jennings and her daughter. She found the former by no means unworthy her notice, and the latter one of the most charming women in the world. The attraction was mutual, for Lady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood.
There was a kind of cold-hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour and a general want of understanding. Indeed, the Dashwoods were so prodigiously delighted with the Middletons that, though not much in the habit of giving anything, they determined to give them a dinner; and soon after their acquaintance began, invited them to dine at Harley Street, where they had taken a very good house for three months. Mrs. Jennings and the Misses Dashwood were invited likewise, and so were Colonel Brandon, as a friend of the young ladies, and the Misses Steele, as belonging to the Middleton party in Conduit Street. They were to meet Mrs. Ferrars.
Mrs. Ferrars turned out to be a little, thin woman, upright even to formality in her figure, and serious even to sourness in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow, and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill-nature. She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas; of the few syllables which did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events; whereas towards the Misses Steele--particularly towards Lucy--both mother and daughter were ostentatiously gracious. On this occasion Marianne created something of a scene by openly resenting this treatment of her sister; while Mr. Dashwood, seeking to interest Colonel Brandon in Elinor, showed him a pretty pair of screens which she had painted for his wife, and informed him that "a few months ago Marianne was remarkably handsome, quite as handsome as Elinor."