 brighter hope.
    Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone to
bed, more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to depend on
getting tolerably out of it.
    It was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in love with
her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him - that
Harriet's nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are
most acute and retentive - and that there could be no necessity for any body's
knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially for her
father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.
    These were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow on
the ground did her further service, for any thing was welcome that might justify
their all three being quite asunder at present.
    The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas-day, she could not
go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his daughter attempted
it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting or receiving unpleasant and
most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that
unsettled state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most
unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every
evening setting in to freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner.
No intercourse with Harriet possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday
any more than on Christmas-day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton's
absenting himself.
    It was weather which might fairly confine every body at home; and though she
hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society or other, it
was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with his being all alone
in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to hear him say to Mr. Knightley,
whom no weather could keep entirely from them, -
    »Ah! Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. Elton?«
    These days of confinement would have been, but for her private perplexities,
remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her brother, whose
feelings must always be of great importance to his companions; and he had,
besides, so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour at Randalls, that his
amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was
always agreeable and obliging, and speaking pleasantly of every body. But with
all the hopes
