Elinor bowed her assent.
“I do not know,” said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own, “how you may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me. Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me—it is worth the trial however, and you shall hear everything. When I first became intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other view in the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before. Your sister’s lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a kind—it is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what she was, that my heart should have been so insensible! But at first I must confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection.”
Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt, stopped him, by saying—
“It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by anything. Do not let me be pained by hearing anything more on the subject.”
“I insist on your hearing the whole of it,” he replied. “My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of associating with people of better income than myself. Every year since my coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my debts; and though the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free; yet