did not catch a
glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant
watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep
out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the
Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was
likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in
town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of
his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings's. He
asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening. Had he _not_
told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I
should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The
next morning brought another short note from Marianne--still
affectionate, open, artless, confiding--everything that could make
_my_ conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried--but could
not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of
the day. If you _can_ pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it
was _then._ With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced
to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks
were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were
forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! what an evening of agony
it was! Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me
Willoughby in such a tone! Oh, God! holding out her hand to me, asking
me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such
speaking solicitude on my face! and Sophia, jealous as the devil on
the other hand, looking all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is
over now. Such an evening! I ran away from you all as soon as I could;
but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white as death.
_That_ was the last, last look I ever had of her; the last manner in
which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! yet when I thought
of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to
imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her
last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I
travelled, in the same look and hue."

[Illustration: "_I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight._"]

A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first
rousing himself, broke it thus:

"Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better,
certainly out of danger?"

"We are assured of it.