Chapter 41 - Part 6 - Sense and Sensibility

But, however, all that is quite out of the question, and not to be thought of or mentioned as to any attachments you know. It never could be. All that is gone by. But I thought I would just tell you of this, because I knew how much it must please you. Not that you have any reason to regret, my dear Elinor. There is no doubt of your doing exceedingly well, quite as well, or better, perhaps, all things considered. Has Colonel Brandon been with you lately? Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity and raise her self-importance to agitate her nerves and fill her mind, and she was therefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply herself, and from the danger of hearing anything more from her brother by the entrance of Mr Robert Ferris. After a few moments' chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her sister's being there, quitted the room in quest of her, and Elinor was left to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner, while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother's love and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that brother's integrity was confirming her most unfavourable opinion of his head and heart. They had scarcely been two minutes by themselves before he began to speak of Edward, for he too had heard of the living, and was very inquisitive on the subject. Elinor repeated the particulars of it as she had given them to John, and their effect on Robert, though very different, was not less striking than it had been on him. He laughed most immoderately. The idea of Edward's being a clergyman, and living in a small parsonage house,