kindness
is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants
is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it."

Elinor had not needed this to be assured of the injustice to which her
sister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable
refinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her
on the delicacies of a strong sensibility, and the graces of a
polished manner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half
there be that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent abilities
and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She
expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own,
and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their
actions on herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while the sisters
were together in their own room after breakfast, which sunk the heart
of Mrs. Jennings still lower in her estimation; because, through her
own weakness, it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself,
though Mrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulse of the utmost
good-will.

With a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling,
from the persuasion of bringing comfort, she entered their room,
saying--

"Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good."

Marianne heard enough. In one moment her imagination placed before her
a letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness and contrition,
explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, convincing; and
instantly followed by Willoughby himself, rushing eagerly into the
room to enforce, at her feet, by the eloquence of his eyes, the
assurances of his letter. The work of one moment was destroyed by the
next. The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, was
before her; and, in the acuteness of the disappointment which followed
such an ecstasy of more than hope, she felt as if, till that instant,
she had never suffered.

The cruelty of Mrs. Jennings, no language, within her reach in her
moments of happiest eloquence, could have expressed; and now she could
reproach her only by the tears which streamed from her eyes with
passionate violence;--a reproach, however, so entirely lost on its
object, that after many expressions of pity, she withdrew, still
referring her to the letter of comfort. But the letter, when she was
calm enough to read it, brought little comfort. Willoughby filled
every page. Her mother, sti