tled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, saying,

"What? have you met him to--"

"I could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most
reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which
was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to
defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the
meeting, therefore, never got abroad."

Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a
soldier she presumed not to censure it.

"Such," said Colonel Brandon, after a pause, "has been the unhappy
resemblance between the fate of mother and daughter! and so imperfectly
have I discharged my trust!"

"Is she still in town?"

"No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near
her delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there
she remains."

Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Elinor
from her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again
the same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion
and esteem for him.

CHAPTER 32

When the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss
Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was
not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Marianne
appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to
it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither
objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and
seemed to shew by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But
though this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt
WAS carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the
effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called,
in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of
compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less violently
irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did
become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. She felt the
loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the
loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the
misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might ONCE
have been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that
she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Elinor;
and, brooding over her sorrows in