true merit. THEY only knew how little he had had to tempt
him to be disobedient, and how small was the consolation,
beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could
remain to him in the loss of friends and fortune.
Elinor gloried in his integrity; and Marianne forgave all
his offences in compassion for his punishment. But though
confidence between them was, by this public discovery,
restored to its proper state, it was not a subject on
which either of them were fond of dwelling when alone.
Elinor avoided it upon principle, as tending to fix still
more upon her thoughts, by the too warm, too positive
assurances of Marianne, that belief of Edward's continued
affection for herself which she rather wished to do away;
and Marianne's courage soon failed her, in trying
to converse upon a topic which always left her more
dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the comparison
it necessarily produced between Elinor's conduct and her own.

She felt all the force of that comparison; but not
as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now;
she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach,
regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted
herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence,
without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened
that she still fancied present exertion impossible,
and therefore it only dispirited her more.

Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards,
of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett's Buildings.
But though so much of the matter was known to them already,