the loss of her two young companions; and Colonel Brandon
immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford.

The Dashwoods were two days on the road, and Marianne bore her journey
on both, without essential fatigue. Every thing that the most zealous
affection, the most solicitous care could do to render her
comfortable, was the office of each watchful companion, and each found
their reward in her bodily ease, and her calmness of spirits. To
Elinor, the observation of the latter was particularly grateful. She,
who had seen her week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by
anguish of heart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor
fortitude to conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally
share, an apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as
she trusted of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to
contentment and cheerfulness.

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
fut