There
is no doubt of your doing exceedingly well--quite as well,
or better, perhaps, all things considered. Has Colonel
Brandon been with you lately?"
Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity,
and raise her self-importance, to agitate her nerves
and fill her mind;--and she was therefore glad to be
spared from the necessity of saying much in reply herself,
and from the danger of hearing any thing more from
her brother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars.
After a few moments' chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that
Fanny was yet uninformed of her sister's being there,
quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was left
to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the
gay unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner
while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother's love
and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother,
earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that
brother's integrity, was confirming her most unfavourable
opinion of his head and heart.
They had scarcely been two minutes by themselves,
before he began to speak of Edward; for he, too, had heard
of the living, and was very inquisitive on the subject.
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