CHAPTER 38

Mrs. Jennings was very warm in her praise of Edward's conduct, but only Eleanor and Mary

Anne understood its true merit.

They only knew how little he had had to tempt him to be disobedient and how small the

consolation, beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could remain to him in the loss

of friends and fortune.

Eleanor gloried in his integrity, and Mary Anne forgave all his offenses in compassion

for his punishment.

But though confidence between them was, by this public discovery, restored to its proper

state, it was not a subject on which either of them were fond of dwelling when alone.

Eleanor avoided it upon principle as tending to fix still more upon her thoughts, by the

too warm, too positive assurances of Mary Anne, that belief of Edward's continued affection

for herself which she rather wished to do away.

And Mary Anne's courage soon failed her in trying to converse upon a topic which

always left her more dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the comparison it necessarily

produced between Eleanor's conduct and her own.

She felt all the force of that comparison, but not as her sister had hoped to urge her

to exertion now.

She felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that

she had never exerted herself before, but it brought only the torture of penitence, without

the hope of amendment.

Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore

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