information about Willoughby. He told her that his sudden departure from
Devonshire to London, which had surprised his friends so much, had been
due to an affecting letter he had received from his ward, Miss Williams,
the natural daughter of a beloved sister-in-law. Willoughby had met this
lady--a pretty girl of sixteen--at Bath, and, after a guilty intimacy,
had abandoned her. Colonel Brandon had gone to her rescue and to fight a
bloodless duel with her betrayer.


_III.--Matrimonial Intrigues_


One day Elinor and Marianne were at Gray's, in Sackville Street,
carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few old-fashioned jewels
belonging to their mother, when they came upon their half-brother, Mr.
John Dashwood. He paid a visit to Mrs. Jennings the next day, and came
with a pretence of an apology for his wife not coming, too. To his
sisters his manners, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings
most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon coming in soon after
himself, he eyed him with a curiosity that seemed to say that he only
wanted to know him to be rich to be equally civil to _him_. After
staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to walk with him to
Conduit Street, and to introduce him to Sir John and Lady Middleton; and
as soon as they were out of the house he began to make inquiries about
Colonel Brandon. Which inquiries having elicited the satisfactory
information that the gentleman had a good property at Delaford Park, in
Dorsetshire, Mr. Dashwood--indifferent to his sister's disclaimers
--proceeded to congratulate her on the prospect of a very respectable
establishment in life, to insist that the objections to a prior
attachment on her side were not insurmountable, and to inform her