e studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her
husband gave her no pain, and when he scolded or abused her, she was
highly diverted. "Mr. Palmer is so droll," she used to say in a whisper
to Elinor; "he is always out of humour." One day, at dinner, his wife
said to him, with her usual laugh, "My love, you contradict everybody.
Do you know that you are quite rude?" To which he replied, "I did not
know I contradicted anybody in calling your mother ill-bred." But the
good-natured old lady was in no wise affronted, "Ay; you may abuse me as
much as you please," she said. "You have taken Charlotte off my hands,
and cannot give her back again. So there I have the whip-hand of you."

The other couple of new friends whom Sir John's reluctance to keep even
a third cousin to himself provided for them were the Misses Steele. In a
morning's excursion to Exeter Sir John and Mrs. Jennings had met with
two young ladies whom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction of discovering
to be her relations; and this was enough for Sir John to invite them
directly to the Park as soon as their engagements at Exeter were over.
The result was that Elinor and Marianne were almost forced into an
intercourse with two young women, who, however civil they might be, were
obviously underbred. Miss Steele was a plain girl about thirty, whose
whole conversation was of beaux; while Miss Lucy Steele, a pretty girl
of twenty-three, was, despite her native cleverness, probably common and
illiterate.

Marianne, however, who had never much toleration for anything like
impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of
taste from herself, soon checked every endeavour at intimacy on their
side by the coldness of her behaviour towards them; but Elinor, from
politeness, submitted to the attentions of both, but especially to those
of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or
of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank
communication of her sentiments, until one day, as they were walking
together from the Park to the cottage, she asked Elinor if she were
personally acquainted with Mrs. John Dashwood's mother, Mrs. Ferrars,
and, in explanation of her question, proceeded to confound her by
confessing that she knew Mr. Edward Ferrars, who had been at one time
under the care of her uncle, Mr. Pratt, at Longstaple, near Plymouth,
and that she had been engaged to him for the last four years.

Distressed by