Their departure took place in the first week in January.
The Middletons were to follow in about a week. The Miss
Steeles kept their station at the park, and were to quit
it only with the rest of the family.
CHAPTER 26
Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings,
and beginning a journey to London under her protection,
and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation,
so short had their acquaintance with that lady been,
so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition,
and so many had been her objections against such a measure
only a few days before! But these objections had all,
with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother
equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor,
in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy,
could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation
which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes
of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect,
how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison,
and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of
Marianne's situation to have the same animating object
in view, the same possibility of hope. A short, a very
short time however must now decide what Willoughby's
intentions were; in all probability he was already in town.
Marianne's eagerness to be gone declared her dependence
on finding him there; and Elinor was resolved not only upon
gaining every new light as to his character which her
own observation or the intelligence of others could give her,
but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister
with such zealous attention, as to ascertain what he was
and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place.
Should the result of her observations be unfavourable,
she was determined at all events to open the eyes
of her sister; should it be otherwise, her exertions
would be of a different nature--she must then learn
to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret
which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne.
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