Chapter 37 - Part 8 - Sense and Sensibility
It is not possible that it should be so.
Edward will marry Lucy.
He will marry a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex,
and time and habit will teach him to forget that he ever thought another superior to her.
If such is your way of thinking, said Marianne,
if the loss of what is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else,
your resolution, your self-command are, perhaps, a little less to be wondered at.
They are brought more within my comprehension.
I understand you. You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.
For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind without
being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature, knowing that it would
make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you,
yet unable to prepare you for it in the least.
It was told me it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself whose
prior engagement ruined all my prospects, and told me, as I thought, with triumph.
This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose by
endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested,
and this has not been only once.
I have had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again.
I have known myself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one
circumstance that could make me less desire the connection.
Nothing has proved him unworthy, nor has anything declared him indifferent to me.
I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother,
and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.
And all this has been going on at a time when, as you know too well,
it has not been my only unhappiness.
If you can think me capable of ever feeling,