Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/85

 before her!) and his marriage now appears imminent. But Lucy Steele has no taste for love in a cottage, and seeing Mrs. Ferrars really obdurate against her, and having an opportunity of making acquaintance with Robert Ferrars—the fortunate younger brother for whom Edward has been disinherited—she directs her energies to securing him. As she is pretty and clever, the gentleman weak and a coxcomb, she soon succeeds; a clandestine marriage puts all possible interference out of the question, and, as Mrs. Ferrars is too proud and too obstinate to reinstate her elder son in his proper place, Robert enjoys a comfortable income with the wife on whose account Edward had been turned out of his mother's house. Edward comes to Elinor for her forgiveness which, of course, he obtains and then, as she insists on his being again received by his mother before she will marry him, he reluctantly consents to call on his sister in London and ask her to make up matters between him and Mrs. Ferrars.

"'And if they really do interest themselves,' said Marianne in her new character of candour, 'in bringing about a reconciliation, I shall think that even John and Panny are not entirely without merit.'"

The reconciliation is brought about, and Edward and Elinor start upon their career of happiness together. Marianne gradually wakes up to the discovery that Colonel Brandon loves her, and the still more startling discovery that she can love him. "Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible passion as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting, instead of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only pleasures in retirement and study, she found herself at nineteen submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new