Why should you think so!« replied he, with a sigh. »But gaiety never was a
part of my character.«
    »Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's,« said Elinor; »I should hardly call
her a lively girl - she is very earnest, very eager in all she does - sometimes
talks a great deal and always with animation - but she is not often really
merry.«
    »I believe you are right,« he replied, »and yet I have always set her down
as a lively girl.«
    »I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,« said Elinor,
»in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people
so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I
can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is
guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people
say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.«
    »But I thought it was right, Elinor,« said Marianne, »to be guided wholly by
the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be
subservient to those of our neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, I am
sure.«
    »No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the
understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour.
You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished
you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I
advised you to adopt their sentiments or conform to their judgment in serious
matters?«
    »You have not been able then to bring your sister over to your plan of
general civility,« said Edward to Elinor. »Do you gain no ground?«
    »Quite the contrary,« replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne.
    »My judgment,« he returned, »is all on your side of the question; but I am
afraid my practice is much more on your sister's. I never wish to offend, but I
am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my
natural aukwardness. I have frequently thought that I must have been intended by
nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at my ease among strangers of
gentility!«
    »Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers,« said Elinor.
    »She knows her
