and daughter! and so
imperfectly have I discharged my trust!"

"Is she still in town?"

"No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near
her delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there
she remains."

Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Elinor
from her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again
the same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion
and esteem for him.

CHAPTER XXXII

When the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss
Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was
not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Marianne
appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to
it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither
objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and
seemed to show by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But
though this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt
_was_ carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the
effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he
called, in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind
of compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less
violently irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched.
Her mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection.
She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she
had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss
Williams, the misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his
designs might _once_ have been on herself, preyed altogether so much
on her spirits, that she could not bring herself to speak of what she
felt even to Elinor; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave
more pain to her sister than could have been communicated by the most
open and most frequent confession of them.

To give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood on receiving and
answering Elinor's letter would be only to give a repetition of what
her daughters had already felt and said; of a disappointment hardly
less painful than Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than
Elinor's. Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other,
arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought; to express her
anxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat she would bear up with
fortitude un