has nothing rational to urge.--Bad.--He ought not to have formed the
engagement.--'His father's disposition:'--he is unjust, however, to his
father. Mr. Weston's sanguine temper was a blessing on all his upright
and honourable exertions; but Mr. Weston earned every present comfort
before he endeavoured to gain it.--Very true; he did not come till Miss
Fairfax was here."

"And I have not forgotten," said Emma, "how sure you were that he might
have come sooner if he would. You pass it over very handsomely--but you
were perfectly right."

"I was not quite impartial in my judgment, Emma:--but yet, I think--had
_you_ not been in the case--I should still have distrusted him."

When he came to Miss Woodhouse, he was obliged to read the whole of it
aloud--all that related to her, with a smile; a look; a shake of the
head; a word or two of assent, or disapprobation; or merely of love, as
the subject required; concluding, however, seriously, and, after steady
reflection, thus--

"Very bad--though it might have been worse.--Playing a most dangerous
game. Too much indebted to the event for his acquittal.--No judge of
his own manners by you.--Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and
regardless of little besides his own convenience.--Fancying you to have
fathomed his secret. Natural enough!--his own mind full of intrigue,
that he should suspect it in others.--Mystery; Finesse--how they pervert
the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more
and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each
other?"

Emma agreed to it, and with a blush of sensibility on Harriet's account,
which she could not give any sincere explanation of.

"You had better go on," said she.

He did so, but very soon stopt again to say, "the pianoforte! Ah! That
was the act of a very, very young man, one too young to consider whether
the inconvenience of it might not very much exceed the pleasure. A
boyish scheme, indeed!--I cannot comprehend a man's wishing to give a
woman any proof of affection which he knows she would rather dispense
with; and he did know that she would have prevented the instrument's
coming if she could."

After this, he made some progress without any pause. Frank Churchill's
confession of having behaved shamefully was the first thing to call for
more than a word in passing.

"I perfectly agree with you, sir,"--was then his remark. "You did behave
very shamefully. You never wrote a truer