fe; and for two years I
had every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed
her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire,
to go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her
father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter--better than she deserved, for, with
a most obstinate and ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would
give no clue, though she certainly knew all. He, her father, a
well-meaning, but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe,
give no information; for he had been generally confined to the house,
while the girls were ranging over the town and making what acquaintance
they chose; and he tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was
convinced himself, of his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the
business. In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all
the rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture. What I
thought, what I feared, may be imagined; and what I suffered too."

"Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "could it be--could Willoughby!"--

"The first news that reached me of her," he continued, "came in a
letter from herself, last October. It was forwarded to me from
Delaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party
to Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly,
which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body,
and which I believe gave offence to some. Little did Mr. Willoughby
imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in
breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom
he had made poor and miserable; but HAD he known it, what would it have
availed? Would he have been less gay or less happy in the smiles of
your sister? No, he had already done that, which no man who CAN feel
for another would do. He had left the girl whose youth and innocence
he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with no
creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He had
left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor
relieved her."

"This is beyond every thing!" exclaimed Elinor.

"His character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse than
both. Knowing all this, as I have now known it many weeks, guess what
I must have felt on seeing