as all this must make her, she would still have been happy
without any of it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford.
    It is true, that Edmund was very far from happy himself. He was suffering
from disappointment and regret, grieving over what was, and wishing for what
could never be. She knew it was so, and was sorry; but it was with a sorrow so
founded on satisfaction, so tending to ease, and so much in harmony with every
dearest sensation, that there are few who might not have been glad to exchange
their greatest gaiety for it.
    Sir Thomas, poor Sir Thomas, a parent, and conscious of errors in his own
conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer. He felt that he ought not to
have allowed the marriage, that his daughter's sentiments had been sufficiently
known to him to render him culpable in authorising it, that in so doing he had
sacrificed the right to the expedient, and been governed by motives of
selfishness and worldly wisdom. These were reflections that required some time
to soften; but time will do almost every thing, and though little comfort arose
on Mrs. Rushworth's side for the misery she had occasioned, comfort was to be
found greater than he had supposed, in his other children. Julia's match became
a less desperate business than he had considered it at first. She was humble and
wishing to be forgiven, and Mr. Yates, desirous of being really received into
the family, was disposed to look up to him and be guided. He was not very solid;
but there was a hope of his becoming less trifling - of his being at least
tolerably domestic and quiet; and, at any rate, there was comfort in finding his
estate rather more, and his debts much less, than he had feared, and in being
consulted and treated as the friend best worth attending to. There was comfort
also in Tom, who gradually regained his health, without regaining the
thoughtlessness and selfishness of his previous habits. He was the better for
ever for his illness. He had suffered, and he had learnt to think, two
advantages that he had never known before; and the self-reproach arising from
the deplorable event in Wimpole Street, to which he felt himself accessary by
all the dangerous intimacy of his unjustifiable theatre, made an impression on
his mind which, at the age of six-and-twenty, with no want of sense, or good
companions, was durable in its happy effects. He became what he ought to be,