The days fill until serious work has no room. When Marianne is recovered, Sir John's schemes begin. Private balls at the park. Parties on the water as often as a showery October allows. Willoughby is in every meeting, and the ease of those parties lets him show his admiration and receive, in Marianne's behaviour, the most pointed assurance of her affection. Elinor is not surprised. She only wishes it were less openly shown, and once or twice she suggests some self-command. Marianne hates concealment where no real disgrace could attend being open. To restrain feelings that are not in themselves wrong seems to her a disgraceful surrender to ordinary notions. Willoughby thinks the same. When he is present she has no eyes for anyone else. If the evening ends in cards, he cheats himself and the rest of the party to get her a good hand. If there is dancing, they are partners for half the time, and when they must separate they stand together and scarcely speak to anybody else. Ridicule cannot shame them. Mrs. Dashwood will not check the display. To her it is only the natural consequence of a strong affection. This is Marianne's season of happiness. The attachment to Norland softens, because his company gives a charm to the present home.
Elinor has no such companion. These amusements cannot make up for what she left, or teach her to think of Norland with less regret. Mrs. Jennings has already repeated her own history three or four times. Lady Middleton is more agreeable than her mother only in being more silent, and the others are sometimes reminded she is among them only by her care for her troublesome boys. In Colonel Brandon alone does Elinor find abilities she can respect, or pleasure as a companion. Willoughby is a lover. His attentions are wholly Marianne's. Brandon, talking with Elinor, finds the greatest consolation for her sister's indifference.
One evening at the park, sitting out while the others dance, his eyes fixed on Marianne, he says with a faint smile that her sister does not approve of second attachments. Elinor says her opinions are all romantic. He thinks she considers them impossible. Elinor has never heard her admit one pardonable instance, not even for those disappointed by inconstancy or by circumstances. He says this cannot hold, then asks Elinor not to desire a total change. He speaks from experience. He once knew a lady who in temper and mind greatly resembled Marianne, who thought and judged like her, but who from an enforced change, from a series of unfortunate circumstances. He stops. His face says he has said too much. The lady might have passed without suspicion if he had not shown that what concerned her ought not to escape his lips. Elinor attempts no more. Marianne, in her place, would not have done so little. The whole story would have been formed at once, and everything set in the most melancholy order of disastrous love. Will the next evening ask him to finish the lady, or leave the sentence where he stopped it?
Coming Up in Chapter 12
On the next morning's walk, Marianne tells Elinor, with delight, that Willoughby has given her a horse he bred himself in Somersetshire, exactly calculated to carry a woman. Their mother does not plan to keep a horse, and Elinor has to say so.
