the familiarity which our intimacy at Barton
appeared to me to justify. I was repulsed indeed! I have
passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse a conduct
which can scarcely be called less than insulting; but though
I have not yet been able to form any reasonable apology for
your behaviour, I am perfectly ready to hear your
justification of it. You have perhaps been misinformed, or
purposely deceived, in something concerning me, which may
have lowered me in your opinion. Tell me what it is, explain
the grounds on which you acted, and I shall be satisfied, in
being able to satisfy you. It would grieve me indeed to be
obliged to think ill of you; but if I am to do it, if I am
to learn that you are not what we have hitherto believed
you, that your regard for us all was insincere, that your
behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let it be told
as soon as possible. My feelings are at present in a state
of dreadful indecision; I wish to acquit you, but certainty
on either side will be ease to what I now suffer. If your
sentiments are no longer what they were, you will return my
notes, and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.

M.D."

That such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have
been so answered, Elinor, for Willoughby's sake, would have been
unwilling to believe. But her condemnation of him did not blind her to
the impropriety of their having been written at all; and she was
silently grieving over the imprudence which had hazarded such
unsolicited proofs of tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding,
and most severely condemned by the event, when Marianne, perceiving
that she had finished the letters, observed to her that they contained
nothing but what any one would have written in the same situation.

"I felt myself," she added, "to be as solemnly engaged to him, as if
the strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other."

"I can believe it," said Elinor; "but unfortunately he did not feel
the same."

"He _did_ feel the same, Elinor--for weeks and weeks he felt it. I
know he did. Whatever may have changed him now, (and nothing but the
blackest art employed against me can have done it), I was once as dear
to him as my own soul could wish. This lock of hair, which now he can
so readily give up, was begged of me with the most earnest
supplication. Had you seen his look, h