beauty can do more. Ah! poor man! he has been dead
these eight years and better. But Colonel, where have
you been to since we parted? And how does your business
go on? Come, come, let's have no secrets among friends."

He replied with his accustomary mildness to all
her inquiries, but without satisfying her in any.
Elinor now began to make the tea, and Marianne was
obliged to appear again.

After her entrance, Colonel Brandon became
more thoughtful and silent than he had been before,
and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to stay long.
No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies
were unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed.

Marianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits
and happy looks. The disappointment of the evening before
seemed forgotten in the expectation of what was to happen
that day. They had not long finished their breakfast before
Mrs. Palmer's barouche stopped at the door, and in a few
minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted
to see them all, that it was hard to say whether she
received most pleasure from meeting her mother or the Miss
Dashwoods again. So surprised at their coming to town,
though it was what she had rather expected all along;
so angry at their accepting her mother's invitation
after having declined her own, though at the same time
she would never have forgiven them if they had not come!