Jane Austen by Elizabeth Jenkins

expected almost immediately,
    "Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting with Willoughby.
    She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it." But at the climax of the affair, when Willoughby's desertion is made plain and announced in a manner of such startling brutality, the criticism of Marianne which is so perpetually implied is for once quite absent, and the scene is offered whole and entire in impartial conviction.
    "Before the housemaid had lit their fire next day, or the sun gained any power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window seats for the sake of all the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her. In this situation, Elinor, roused from sleep by her agitation and sobs, first perceived her; and after observing her for a few moments with silent anxiety, said, in a tone of the most considerate gentleness,

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    'Marianne, may I ask--' 'No, Elinor,' she replied, 'ask nothing. You will soon know all.' The sort of desperate calmness with which this was said lasted no longer than while she spoke, and was immediately followed by a return of the same excessive affliction. It was some minutes before she could go on with her letter; and the frequent bursts of grief, which still obliged her at intervals to withhold her pen, were proof enough of her feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing for the last time to Willoughby."
    She spent the time till breakfast wandering about the house, avoiding everybody, and after breakfast, during which Elinor had done her best to distract the attention of Mrs. Jennings, "a letter was delivered to Marianne which she eagerly caught from the servant, and, turning of a deathlike paleness, instantly ran out of the room. Elinor, who saw as plainly by this as if she had seen the direction, that it must come from Willoughby, felt immediately such a sickness at heart as made her hardly able to hold up her head, and sat in such a general tremor as made her fear it impossible to escape Mrs. Jennings'
    notice. That good lady, however, saw only that Marianne had
    received a letter from Willoughby, which appeared to her a very good joke, and which she treated accordingly by hoping with a laugh that she would find it to her liking." She went on to talk of their forthcoming marriage, which had been the standing topic of
    conversation at Barton for the past several months; and Elinor tried in vain to make her believe that Marianne and Willoughby were not formally engaged; Mrs. Jennings put down all these denials to
    slyness, and assured her that she was not to be taken in. Elinor at length gave up the unequal struggle; "eager at all events to know what Willoughby had written, [she] hurried away to their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne stretched on the bed, almost
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    choked by grief, a letter in her hand, and two or three others lying by her. Elinor drew near, but without saying a word, and seating herself on the bed, took her hand and kissed her affectionately several times, and then gave way to a burst of tears which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne's. The latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of this behavior, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction, she put all the letters into Elinor's hands, and then, covering her face with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony."
    Allowing for the natural difficulty of one great creative artist properly to estimate another, it is not easy to understand what Charlotte Brontë meant by saying that Jane Austen's heroines have only so much acquaintance with the passions as their author would think lady-like.
    After a period of distraught, oblivious misery,