To compose a letter which might at once do justice to her sentiments and her situation, convey gratitude without servile regret, be guarded without coldness, and honest without resentment--a letter which Eleanor might not be pained by the perusal of--and, above all, which she might not blush herself, if Henry should chance to see, was an undertaking to frighten away all her powers of performance; and, after long thought and much perplexity, to be very brief was all that she could determine on with any confidence of safety. The money therefore which Eleanor had advanced was enclosed with little more than grateful thanks, and the thousand good wishes of a most affectionate heart.
"This has been a strange acquaintance,"
observed Mrs. Morland, as the letter was finished;"soon made and soon ended. I am sorry it happens so, for Mrs. Allen thought them very pretty kind of young people;and you were sadly out of luck too in your Isabella.
Ah! Poor James! Well, we must live and learn; and the next new friends you make I hope will be better worth keeping."Catherine coloured as she warmly answered, "No friend can be better worth keeping than Eleanor.""If so, my dear, I dare say you will meet again some time or other; do not be uneasy. It is ten to one but you are thrown together again in the course of a few years;and then what a pleasure it will be!"
Mrs. Morland was not happy in her attempt at consolation.
The hope of meeting again in the course of a few years could only put into Catherine's head what might happen within that time to make a meeting dreadful to her.
She could never forget Henry Tilney, or think of him with less tenderness than she did at that moment; but he might forget her; and in that case, to meet--! Her eyes filled with tears as she pictured her acquaintance so renewed;and her mother, perceiving her comfortable suggestions to have had no good effect, proposed, as another expedient for restoring her spirits, that they should call on Mrs. Allen.
The two houses were only a quarter of a mile apart;and, as they walked, Mrs. Morland quickly dispatched all that she felt on the score of James's disappointment.
"We are sorry for him," said she; "but otherwise there is no harm done in the match going off; for it could not be a desirable thing to have him engaged to a girl whom we had not the smallest acquaintance with, and who was so entirely without fortune; and now, after such behaviour, we cannot think at all well of her. Just at present it comes hard to poor James; but that will not last forever;and I dare say he will be a discreeter man all his life, for the foolishness of his first choice."This was just such a summary view of the affair as Catherine could listen to; another sentence might have endangered her complaisance, and made her reply less rational;for soon were all her thinking powers swallowed up in the reflection of her own change of feelings and spirits since last she had trodden that well-known road. It was not three months ago since, wild with joyful expectation, she had there run backwards and forwards some ten times a day, with an heart light, gay, and independent;looking forward to pleasures untasted and unalloyed, and free from the apprehension of evil as from the knowledge of it. Three months ago had seen her all this; and now, how altered a being did she return!