The Engagement Exposed — Sense and Sensibility

Mrs Jennings comes in from Mrs Palmer sure she has news. The baby had spots. It was only the red gum, and Mr Donavan, just come from Harley Street, said the same. She asked him if there was any news. He hopes the young ladies will not be alarmed about their sister. Fanny is not ill in the way Elinor first fears. Anne Steele has told the secret. Thinking the family too fond of Lucy to make a difficulty, she found Fanny alone at her carpet-work, five minutes after a plan to match Edward with a lord's daughter. Fanny screamed. Lucy, arriving into it, was scolded until she fainted, and the cousins were ordered out of the house. Mrs Ferrars has been sent for, so that she may have hysterics too. Marianne is absent. Elinor can speak, glad not to be suspected of any particular interest, and she tries to believe the matter can end only in the marriage.

Marianne has to hear it before Mrs Jennings talks of nothing else. How long has this been known, and has he written? Four months. Lucy told her at Barton Park last November, in confidence. Four months, Marianne cries, while Elinor attended her in all her misery, and while Marianne reproached her for being happy. It was not fit, Elinor says, that she should then know how much the reverse was true. The promise obliged the secret. She owed Lucy no hint, and she owed her family not to raise a worry she could not satisfy. She has loved him, and she has not loved only him. If the loss is so easily made up, Marianne answers, the self-command is less to be wondered at. Elinor understands. Marianne thinks she has never felt much. For four months there was nobody she could tell. The news was forced on her by the person whose earlier engagement had ruined her own, and told, she thought, with triumph. Nothing has proved him unworthy. Marianne is subdued. She has been barbarous, she says, to her only comfort. She promises no bitterness, no extra dislike of Lucy, and no less cordiality if she sees Edward. Three times, in front of Mrs Jennings, she says, Yes, ma'am.

John comes the next morning, solemn. Fanny has borne it with the fortitude of an angel, and she wishes they had asked their sisters instead. He stops to be thanked. Mrs Ferrars offered the Norfolk estate if Edward would marry Miss Morton, a thousand a year, and then twelve hundred. If he kept to Lucy, his own two thousand pounds would be his all, and she would hinder him in any profession. He said little, and it was determined. Nothing should make him give up the engagement. Mrs Jennings begs pardon. If he had done otherwise, she should have thought him a rascal. He is dismissed for ever from his mother's notice. John left her that morning with her lawyer, settling on Robert the estate that might have been Edward's. Marianne walks the room, and keeps her retort until the door has shut. Will the four months she has finally named be what they hear, or only the estate given away this morning?