“Her mother is a very good sort of woman,” was Catherine’s answer.

“What was her father?”

“A lawyer, I believe.  They live at Putney.”

“Are they a wealthy family?”

“No, not very.  I do not believe Isabella has any fortune at all:  but that will not signify in your family.  Your father is so very liberal!  He told me the other day that he only valued money as it allowed him to promote the happiness of his children.”  The brother and sister looked at each other.  “But,” said Eleanor, after a short pause, “would it be to promote his happiness, to enable him to marry such a girl?  She must be an unprincipled one, or she could not have used your brother so.  And how strange an infatuation on Frederick’s side!  A girl who, before his eyes, is violating an engagement voluntarily entered into with another man!  Is not it inconceivable, Henry?  Frederick too, who always wore his heart so proudly!  Who found no woman good enough to be loved!”

“That is the most unpromising circumstance, the strongest presumption against him.  When I think of his past declarations, I give him up.  Moreover, I have too good an opinion of Miss Thorpe’s prudence to suppose that she would part with one gentleman before the other was secured.  It is all over with Frederick indeed!  He is a deceased man —­ defunct in understanding.  Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor, and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in!  Open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise.”

“Such a sister-in-law, Henry, I should delight in,” said Eleanor with a smile.

“But perhaps,” observed Catherine, “though she has behaved so ill by our family, she may behave better by yours.  Now she has really got the man she likes, she may be constant.”

“Indeed I am afraid she will,” replied Henry; “I am afraid she will be very constant, unless a baronet should come in her way; that is Frederick’s only chance.  I will get the Bath paper, and look over the arrivals.”

“You think it is all for ambition, then?  And, upon my word, there are some things that seem very like it.  I cannot forget that, when she first knew what my father would do for them, she seemed quite disappointed that it was not more.  I never was so deceived in anyone’s character in my life before.”

“Among all the great variety that you have known and studied.”

“My own disappointment and loss in her is very great; but, as for poor James, I suppose he will hardly ever recover it.”

“Your brother is certainly very much to be pitied at present; but we must not, in our concern for his sufferings, undervalue yours.  You feel, I suppose, that in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself:  you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy.  Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent.  You would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world.  You feel that you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve, on whose regard you can place dependence, or whose counsel, in any difficulty, you could rely on.  You feel all this?”