"Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended," said he,
"by the resemblance I have fancied between her and my
poor disgraced relation. Their fates, their fortunes,
cannot be the same; and had the natural sweet
disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind,
or a happier marriage, she might have been all that you
will live to see the other be. But to what does all this
lead? I seem to have been distressing you for nothing.
Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as this--untouched
for fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at all!
I WILL be more collected--more concise. She left to my care
her only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first
guilty connection, who was then about three years old.
She loved the child, and had always kept it with her.
It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly
would I have discharged it in the strictest sense,
by watching over her education myself, had the nature
of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home;
and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school.
I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my
brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which
left to me the possession of the family property,) she
visited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation;
but I am well aware that I have in general been suspected
of a much nearer connection with her. It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,)
that I removed her from school, to place her under the care
of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire,
who had the charge of four or five other girls of about
the same time of life; and for two years I had every reason
to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared.
I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turned
out,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of
her young friends, who was attending her father there
for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man,
and I thought well of his daughter--better than she deserved,
for, with a most obstinate and ill-judged secrecy,
she would tell nothing, would give no clue, though she
certainly knew all. He, her father, a well-meaning,
but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe,
give no information; for he had been generally confined
to the house, while the girls were ranging over the town
and making what acquaintance they chose; and he tried
to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced himself,
of his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the business.
In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone;
all the rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture.
What I thought, what I feared, may be imagined; and what I
suffered too."

"Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "could it be--could
Willoughby!"--

"The first news that reached me of her," he continued,
"came in a letter from herself, last October.
It was forwarded to me from Delaford, and I received it
on the very morning of our intended party to Whitwell;
and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly,
which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange
to every body, and which I believe gave offence to some.
Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when his
looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party,
that I was called away to the relief of one whom he
had made poor and miserable; but HAD he known it,
what would it have availed? Would he have been less
gay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No,
he had already done that, which no man who CAN feel
for another would do. He had left the girl whose
youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of
the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help,
no friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her,
promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote,
nor relieved her."

"This is beyond every thing!" exclaimed Elinor.

"His character is now before you; expensive, dissipated,
and worse than both. Knowing all this, as I have now
known it many weeks, guess what I must have felt on seeing
your sister as fond of him as ever, and on being assured
that she was to marry him: guess what I must have felt
for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and
found you alone, I came determined to know the truth;
though irresolute what to do when it WAS known.
My behaviour must have seemed strange to you then;
but now you will comprehend it. To suffer you all to be
so deceived; to see your sister--but what could I do?
I had no hope of interfering with success; and sometimes
I thought your sister's influence might yet reclaim him.
But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what
were his designs on her. Whatever they may have been,
however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless WILL
turn with gratitude towards her own condition, when she
compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she considers
the wretched and hopeless situation of this poor girl,
and pictures her to herself, with an affection for him so strong,
still as strong as her own, and with a mind tormented
by self-reproach, which must attend her through life.
Surely this comparison must have its use with her.


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