Yet after a time I DID say, for at first I was quite overcome--that if she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every encouragement in my power.

Time, a very little time, I tell him, will do everything;--Marianne's heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Willoughby.-- His own merits must soon secure it." "To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, you have not yet made him equally sanguine." "No .-- He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her.

There, however, he is quite mistaken.

His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed;--and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy.

And his person, his manners too, are all in his favour.