He stopped.

“Well, sir,” said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, “and this is all?”

“All!⁠—no⁠—have you forgot what passed in town? That infamous letter? Did she show it you?”

“Yes, I saw every note that passed.”

“When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in town the whole time), what I felt is, in the common phrase, not to be expressed; in a more simple one⁠—perhaps too simple to raise any emotion⁠—my feelings were very, very painful. Every line, every word was⁠—in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid⁠—a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was, in the same language, a thunderbolt. Thunderbolts and daggers! what a reproof would she have given me! Her taste, her opinions⁠—I believe they are better known to me than my own, and I am sure they are dearer.”