Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/71

 cousin, Sir John Middleton. He is a good-humoured sportsman, his wife a vapid fine lady, and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings, a vulgar old woman. He is very fond of society, and the kind of society he gathers round him may be easily guessed.

Marianne, who is refined and cultivated, despises them all intensely, and is barely civil to the Middletons and their friends; Elinor, to whom their ways are equally distasteful, nevertheless recognises the kindly intentions of their landlord, and responds to them as far as possible. There is one individual at Barton Park whom she finds agreeable—Colonel Brandon, a friend of Sir John, who is a sensible, cultivated man of about five and thirty, and she is the more interested in him as he is from the first visibly falling in love with Marianne; but that young lady considers his age as an insuperable barrier to any ideas of marriage. "Thirty-five has nothing to do with matrimony," she declares contemptuously.

"'Perhaps,' said Elinor, 'thirty-five and seventeen had better not have anything to do with matrimony together; but if there should by any chance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, I should not think Colonel Brandon's being thirty-five any objection to his marrying her.'

"'A woman of seven and twenty,' said Marianne after pausing a moment, 'can never hope to feel or inspire affection again; and if her home be uncomfortable or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman, therefore, there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be