your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the
authors or their heirs."

"No, Edward, I should have something else to do with it."

"Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who
wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, that no one can ever
be in love more than once in their life--your opinion on that point is
unchanged, I presume?"

"Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is
not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them."

"Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see," said Elinor, "she is not
at all altered."

"She is only grown a little more grave than she was."

"Nay, Edward," said Marianne, "you need not reproach me. You are not
very gay yourself."

"Why should you think so!" replied he, with a sigh. "But gaiety never
was a part of MY character."

"Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's," said Elinor; "I should hardly
call her a lively girl--she is very earnest, very eager in all she
does--sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation--but she
is not often really merry."

"I believe you are right," he replied, "and yet I have always set her
down as a lively girl."

"I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes," said
Elinor, "in a total misapprehension of character in some point or
other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or
stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the
deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of
themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them,
without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge."

"But I thought it was right, Elinor," said Marianne, "to be guided
wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were
given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has
always been your doctrine, I am sure."

"No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of
the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the
behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess,
of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with
greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their
sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?"

"You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of
general civility," said Edward to Elinor. "Do you gain no ground?"

"Quite the contrary,"