acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having some hope of a return? It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself! . . .
"The rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for her thoughts. She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a fresh surprise: and every surprise must be matter of humiliation to her. How to understand it all! how to understand the deceptions she had been thus practising on herself and living under! The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart. She sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery—in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly, that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree, that she had been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying, that she was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of wretchedness. . . . With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken, and she had not quite done nothing—for she had done mischief. She had brought evil on Harriet, on herself, and, as she too much feared, on Mr. Knightley. Were this most unequal of all connections to take place, on her must rest all the reproach of having given it a beginning; for his attachment she must believe to be produced only by a
