“The inconveniences would have been different. He would then have suffered under the pecuniary distresses which, because they are removed, he now reckons as nothing. He would have had a wife of whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would have been always necessitous — always poor and probably would soon have learnt to rank the innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far more importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a wife.”

“I have not a doubt of it,” said Marianne; “and I have nothing to regret — nothing but my own folly.”

“Rather say your mother’s imprudence, my child,” said Mrs Dashwood; “she must be answerable.”

Marianne would not let her proceed; and Elinor, satisfied that each felt their own error, wished to avoid any survey of the past that might weaken her sister’s spirits; she therefore, pursuing the first subject, immediately continued:

“One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from the whole of the story — that all Willoughby’s difficulties have arisen from the first offence against virtue, in his behaviour to Eliza Williams. That crime has been the origin of every lesser one, and of all his present discontents.”