g
but good. It will give you every thing that you want--consideration,
independence, a proper home--it will fix you in the centre of all your
real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy
for ever. This, Harriet, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in
either of us."

"Dear Miss Woodhouse!"--and "Dear Miss Woodhouse," was all that Harriet,
with many tender embraces could articulate at first; but when they did
arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to
her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she
ought. Mr. Elton's superiority had very ample acknowledgment.

"Whatever you say is always right," cried Harriet, "and therefore I
suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not
have imagined it. It is so much beyond any thing I deserve. Mr. Elton,
who might marry any body! There cannot be two opinions about _him_. He
is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses--'To Miss ------.'
Dear me, how clever!--Could it really be meant for me?"

"I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a
certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to
the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by
matter-of-fact prose."

"It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure,
a month ago, I had no more idea myself!--The strangest things do take
place!"

"When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted--they do indeed--and
really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so
evidently, so palpably desirable--what courts the pre-arrangement of
other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form.
You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one
another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying
will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a
something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right
direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.

The course of true love never did run smooth--

A Hartfield edition of Shakespeare would have a long note on that
passage."

"That Mr. Elton should really be in love with me,--me, of all people,
who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! And he, the very
handsomest man that ever was, and a man that every body looks up to,
quite like Mr. Knightley! His company so sought after, t