"Watched us out of the house!"
"Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often
I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling
in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight,
as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street,
there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse
of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant
watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing
desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us
so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible,
as well as everybody else who was likely to prove
an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being
in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe,
the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called
at Mrs. Jennings's. He asked me to a party, a dance at his
house in the evening.--Had he NOT told me as an inducement
that you and your sister were to be there, I should have
felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him.
The next morning brought another short note from Marianne--
still affectionate, open, artless, confiding--everything
that could make MY conduct most hateful. I could not
answer it. I tried--but could not frame a sentence.
But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day.
If you CAN pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it
was THEN. With my head and heart full of your sister,
I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman!--Those
three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last,
as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a
sweet figure I cut!--what an evening of agony it was!--
Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me
Willoughby in such a tone!--Oh, God!--holding out her hand
to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching
eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face!--and
Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking
all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is over now.--
Such an evening!--I ran away from you all as soon as I could;
but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white
as death.--THAT was the last, last look I ever had of her;--
the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid
sight!--yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying,
it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew
exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last
in this world. She was before me, constantly before me,
as I travelled, in the same look and hue."
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