der, she exclaimed--

"Four months!--Have you known of this four months?"

Elinor confirmed it.

"What!--while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your
heart?--And I have reproached you for being happy!"--

"It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!"

"Four months!" cried Marianne again. "So calm! so cheerful! how have
you been supported?"

"By feeling that I was doing my duty. My promise to Lucy, obliged me
to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of
the truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in
them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to
satisfy."

Marianne seemed much struck.

"I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother," added
Elinor; "and once or twice I have attempted it; but without betraying
my trust, I never could have convinced you."

"Four months! and yet you loved him!"

"Yes. But I did not love only him;--and while the comfort of others
was dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt.
Now, I can think and speak of it with little emotion. I would not have
you suffer on my account; for I assure you I no longer suffer
materially myself. I have many things to support me. I am not
conscious of having provoked the disappointment by any imprudence of
my own, I have borne it as much as possible without spreading it
farther. I acquit Edward of essential misconduct. I wish him very
happy; and I am so sure of his always doing his duty, that though now
he may harbour some regret, in the end he must become so. Lucy does
not want sense, and that is the foundation on which every thing good
may be built. And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in
the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said
of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is
not meant--it is not fit--it is not possible that it should be so.
Edward will marry Lucy; he will marry a woman superior in person and
understanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to
forget that he ever thought another superior to _her._"

"If such is your way of thinking," said Marianne, "if the loss of what
is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your
resolution, your self-command, are, perhaps, a little less to be
wondered at. They are brought more within my comprehension."

"I understand you. You do not suppose that I have