The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma
sat down to think and be miserable.—It
was a wretched business indeed!—Such an
overthrow of every thing she had been wishing for!—Such
a development of every thing most unwelcome!—Such
a blow for Harriet!—that was the worst
of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation,
of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil
to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have
submitted to feel yet more mistaken— more
in error—more disgraced by mis-judgment,
than she actually was, could the effects of her blunders
have been confined to herself.
“If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking
the man, I could have borne any thing. He might
have doubled his presumption to me— but
poor Harriet!”
How she could have been so deceived!—He
protested that he had never thought seriously of Harriet—never!
She looked back as well as she could; but it was
all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she
supposed, and made every thing bend to it. His
manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering,
dubious, or she could not have been so misled.
The picture!—How eager he had been about
the picture!— and the charade!—and
an hundred other circumstances;— how clearly
they had seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure,
the charade, with its “ready wit”—but
then the “soft eyes”— in fact
it suited neither; it was a jumble without taste or
truth. Who could have seen through such thick-headed
nonsense?
Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought
his manners to herself unnecessarily gallant; but
it had passed as his way, as a mere error of judgment,
of knowledge, of taste, as one proof among others
that he had not always lived in the best society,
that with all the gentleness of his address, true elegance
was sometimes wanting; but, till this very day, she
had never, for an instant, suspected it to mean any
thing but grateful respect to her as Harriet’s
friend.
To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first
idea on the subject, for the first start of its possibility.
There was no denying that those brothers had penetration.
She remembered what Mr. Knightley had once said to
her about Mr. Elton, the caution he had given, the
conviction he had professed that Mr. Elton would never
marry indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer
a knowledge of his character had been there shewn than
any she had reached herself. It was dreadfully
mortifying; but Mr. Elton was proving himself, in
many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant
and believed him; proud, assuming, conceited; very
full of his own claims, and little concerned about
the feelings of others.
