Jane Austen: Emma

VOLUME III 15. CHAPTER XV (continued)

"It will be natural for me," he added shortly afterwards, "to speak my opinion aloud as I read. By doing it, I shall feel that I am near you. It will not be so great a loss of time: but if you dislike it--"

"Not at all. I should wish it."

Mr. Knightley returned to his reading with greater alacrity.

"He trifles here," said he, "as to the temptation. He knows he is wrong, and has nothing rational to urge.--Bad.--He ought not to have formed the engagement.--`His father's disposition:'-- he is unjust, however, to his father. Mr. Weston's sanguine temper was a blessing on all his upright and honourable exertions; but Mr. Weston earned every present comfort before he endeavoured to gain it.--Very true; he did not come till Miss Fairfax was here."

"And I have not forgotten," said Emma, "how sure you were that he might have come sooner if he would. You pass it over very handsomely-- but you were perfectly right."

"I was not quite impartial in my judgment, Emma:--but yet, I think-- had you not been in the case--I should still have distrusted him."

When he came to Miss Woodhouse, he was obliged to read the whole of it aloud--all that related to her, with a smile; a look; a shake of the head; a word or two of assent, or disapprobation; or merely of love, as the subject required; concluding, however, seriously, and, after steady reflection, thus--

"Very bad--though it might have been worse.--Playing a most dangerous game. Too much indebted to the event for his acquittal.-- No judge of his own manners by you.--Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and regardless of little besides his own convenience.-- Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough!-- his own mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others.--Mystery; Finesse--how they pervert the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?"