— Marianne's heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Willoughby. — His own merits must soon secure it.”

“To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, you have not yet made him equally sanguine.”

“No. — He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her.

There, however, he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed; — and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy.