to be her relations; and this was enough for Sir John to invite them
directly to the Park as soon as their engagements at Exeter were over.
The result was that Elinor and Marianne were almost forced into an
intercourse with two young women, who, however civil they might be, were
obviously underbred. Miss Steele was a plain girl about thirty, whose
whole conversation was of beaux; while Miss Lucy Steele, a pretty girl
of twenty-three, was, despite her native cleverness, probably common and
illiterate.

Marianne, however, who had never much toleration for anything like
impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of
taste from herself, soon checked every endeavour at intimacy on their
side by the coldness of her behaviour towards them; but Elinor, from
politeness, submitted to the attentions of both, but especially to those
of Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or
of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank
communication of her sentiments, until one day, as they were walking
together from the Park to the cottage, she asked Elinor if she were
personally acquainted with Mrs. John Dashwood's mother, Mrs. Ferrars,
and, in explanation of her question, proceeded to confound her by
confessing that she knew Mr. Edward Ferrars, who had been at one time
under the care of her uncle, Mr. Pratt, at Longstaple, near Plymouth,
and that she had been engaged to him for the last four years.

Distressed by this news, which she was quite aware that Lucy had
confided to her merely from jealousy and suspicion, indignant at
Edward's duplicity, though convinced of his genuine attachment to
herself, Elinor resolved not to give pain to her mother and sister by
telling them of the engagement. Indeed, her attention was soon withdrawn
from her own to her sister's love affairs by an invitation which Mrs.