Taking account of this resolve, as expressed in Mr. John Dashwood’s frequent talk of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands made upon his purse, and exasperated, too, by the manifest disapprobation with which Mrs. John Dashwood looked upon the growing attachment between her own brother, Edward Ferrars, and Elinor, Mrs. Henry Dashwood and her daughters left their old home with some abruptness and went to live in Devonshire, where their old friend, Sir John Middleton, of Barton Park, had provided them with a cottage close to his own place.

Elinor, the eldest of the daughters, possessed a strength of understanding and coolness of judgment which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence.  She had an excellent heart.  Her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them.  It was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.  Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s.  She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys could have no moderation.  She was generous, amiable, interesting; she was everything but prudent.  The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great, and her excess of sensibility, which Elinor saw with concern, was by Mrs. Dashwood valued and cherished.

Margaret, the other sister, was good-humoured; but she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne’s romance, without having much of her sense, and, at thirteen, she did not bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.

But whatever the virtues or failings of the Dashwood ladies, their society was very welcome at Barton Park.  Sir John Middleton was a good-looking man about forty, thoroughly good-humoured in manner and countenance, friendly and kind-hearted in disposition, who delighted in collecting about him more young people than his house would hold.

Lady Middleton was a handsome woman of six-and-twenty, well-bred, and graceful in address, but deficient in frankness, warmth, or anything to say for herself.  She piqued herself upon the elegance of her table appointments and of all her domestic arrangements; and this kind of vanity it was that constituted her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties.  Sir John was a sportsman; Lady Middleton a mother.  He hunted and shot, and she humoured her children; and these were their only resources.  Continual engagements at home and abroad, however, supplied all the deficiencies of nature and education—­supported the good spirits of Sir John, and gave exercise to the good-breeding of his wife.