ppose that his age may appear much greater to you than to my
mother; but you can hardly deceive yourself as to his having the use
of his limbs!"
"Did not you hear him complain of the rheumatism? and is not that the
commonest infirmity of declining life?"
"My dearest child," said her mother, laughing, "at this rate you must
be in continual terror of _my_ decay; and it must seem to you a
miracle that my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty."
"Mamma, you are not doing me justice. I know very well that Colonel
Brandon is not old enough to make his friends yet apprehensive of
losing him in the course of nature. He may live twenty years longer.
But thirty-five has nothing to do with matrimony."
"Perhaps," said Elinor, "thirty-five and seventeen had better not have
any thing to do with matrimony together. But if there should by any
chance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, I
should not think Colonel Brandon's being thirty-five any objection to
his marrying _her_ ."
"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment,
"can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be
uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might
bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the
provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman
therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of
convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be
no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem
only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at
the expense of the other."
"It would be impossible, I know," replied Elinor, "to convince you
that a woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of thirty-five
anything near enough to love, to make him a desirable companion to
her. But I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon and his wife to
the constant confinement of a sick chamber, merely because he chanced
to complain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight rheumatic
feel in one of his shoulders."
"But he talked of flannel waistcoats," said Marianne; "and with me a
flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps,
rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and
the feeble."
"Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him
half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interestin
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