On the walk from the Park to the cottage, Lucy is agreeable, ignorant, and without delicacy, and the flatteries that win the Park make the same manner, offered to Elinor, worth less. She asks whether Elinor is personally acquainted with Mrs Ferrars. Elinor has never seen her, and she will not give her real opinion. Lucy says Mrs Ferrars is nothing to her at present, though the time may come when they are very intimately connected. Elinor's guess is Robert. Lucy fixes her eyes on her and names the eldest brother.
Disbelief keeps Elinor from being overcome. Four years. The uncle is Mr Pratt, at Longstaple, near Plymouth, where Edward was four years a pupil, and the engagement was formed a year after he quitted. To prevent the possibility of a mistake, Lucy puts a miniature into Elinor's hand. She has had it above three years. It does not do him justice, but the person cannot be missed. Elinor acknowledges the likeness and returns it almost instantly. She says she certainly did not seek this confidence, and that her being acquainted with it cannot add to its safety. The secret is safe with her. Lucy's face does not change. What would Elinor advise? What would she do herself? Elinor is startled, and she will give no advice. Lucy's own judgment must direct her.
He came from that uncle's. The stay was a fortnight, which Elinor remembers he described as some friends near Plymouth, naming nobody. Then Lucy shows the direction of a letter, carelessly, and asks if Elinor knows his hand. She does. The picture, Elinor had allowed herself to believe, might have been accidentally obtained. It might not have been his gift. A correspondence by letter could subsist only under a positive engagement, and could be authorised by nothing else. For a few moments her heart sinks and she can hardly stand. Exertion is necessary, the struggle is resolute, and the success is speedy. Lucy has one further comfort to offer him, since he has not her picture. She gave him a lock of her hair set in a ring when he was at Longstaple last, and she asks whether Elinor noticed the ring. "I did," says Elinor, with a composure that conceals a distress beyond anything she has felt. They have reached the cottage. After a few minutes the Miss Steeles return to the Park, and Elinor is at liberty to think and be wretched. She has said the secret is safe with her. Will that leave her any sentence she can say, now that the letter has closed the doubt the picture left open?
Coming Up in Chapter 23
Elinor cannot believe Lucy would invent a falsehood this large, where no temptation would answer the folly of it. The house of Mr. Pratt, the visit near Plymouth, the picture, the letter, and the ring stand against nothing but her own wishes.
