Quotation from: Sense and Sensibility

Written by: Jane Austen


As they approached Barton, indeed, and entered
on scenes of which every field and every tree brought
some peculiar, some painful recollection, she grew silent
and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice,
sat earnestly gazing through the window. But here,
Elinor could neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw,
as she assisted Marianne from the carriage, that she
had been crying, she saw only an emotion too natural
in itself to raise any thing less tender than pity,
and in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the
whole of her subsequent manner, she traced the direction
of a mind awakened to reasonable exertion; for no sooner
had they entered their common sitting-room, than Marianne
turned her eyes around it with a look of resolute firmness,
as if determined at once to accustom herself to the sight
of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could
be connected.--She said little, but every sentence aimed
at cheerfulness, and though a sigh sometimes escaped her,
it never passed away without the atonement of a smile.
After dinner she would try her piano-forte. She went to it;
but the music on which her eye first rested was an opera,
procured for her by Willoughby, containing some of their
favourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name
in his hand-writing.--That would not do.--She shook her head,
put the music aside, and after running over the keys
for a minute, complained of feebleness in her fingers,
and closed the instrument again; declaring however with firmness
as she did so, that she should in future practice much.

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