Chapter 2 Part 2

December 16th A whole fortnight has passed, and I have not

once opened these pages. I have been long enough away from my journal to come back to

it with a healthier and better mind, I hope, so far as Sir Percival is concerned.

There is not much to record of the past two weeks. The dresses are almost all finished,

and the new traveling trunks have been sent here from London. Poor dear Laura hardly

leaves me for a moment all day, and last night, when neither of us could sleep, she came

and crept into my bed to talk to me there.

I shall lose you so soon, Marianne, she said. I must make the most of you while I can.

They are to be married at Limridge Church, and thank heaven, not one of the neighbors

is to be invited to the ceremony. The only visitor will be our old friend, Mr. Arnold,

who is to come from Polesdean to give Laura away, her uncle being far too delicate to

trust himself outside the door in such inclement weather as we now have.

If I were not determined from this day forth to see nothing but the bright side of our

prospects, the melancholy absence of any male relative of Laura's at the most important

moment of her life would make me very gloomy and very distrustful of the future.

But I have done with gloom and distrust. That is to say, I have done with writing about

either the one or the other in this journal.

Sir Percival is to arrive tomorrow, he offered, in case we wish to treat him on terms of rigid

etiquette, to write and ask our clergyman to grant him the hospitality of the rectory during

the short period of his sojourn at Limeridge before the marriage.

Under the circumstances neither Mr. Fairley nor I thought it all necessary for us to trouble

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