My cousins have been so plaguing me! I declare sometimes I do not know which way to look before them." She had wandered away to a subject on which Elinor had nothing to say, and therefore soon judged it expedient to find her way back again to the first.
"Well, but Miss Dashwood," speaking triumphantly, "people may say what they chuse about Mr.Ferrars's declaring he would not have Lucy, for it is no such thing I can tell you; and it is quite a shame for such ill-natured reports to be spread abroad.

Whatever Lucy might think about it herself, you know, it was no business of other people to set it down for certain." "I never heard any thing of the kind hinted at before, I assure you," said Elinor.
"Oh, did not you?
But it WAS said, I know, very well, and by more than one; for Miss Godby told Miss Sparks, that nobody in their senses could expect Mr.Ferrars to give up a woman like Miss Morton, with thirty thousand pounds to her fortune, for Lucy Steele that had nothing at all; and I had it from Miss Sparks myself.

And besides that, my cousin Richard said himself, that when it came to the point he was afraid Mr.
Ferrars would be off; and when Edward did not come near us for three days, I could not tell what to think myself; and I believe in my heart Lucy gave it up all for lost; for we came away from your brother's Wednesday, and we saw nothing of him not all Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and did not know what was become of him.

Once Lucy thought to write to him, but then her spirits rose against that.

However this morning he came just as we came home from church; and then it all came out, how he had been sent for Wednesday to Harley Street, and been talked to by his mother and all of them, and how he had declared before them all that he loved nobody but Lucy, and nobody but Lucy would he have.