Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition to sleep.
Into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 16 The hair was curled and the maid sent away,
And Emma sat down to think and be miserable.
It was a wretched business indeed.
Such an overthrow of everything she'd been wishing for.
Such a development of everything most unwelcome.
Such a blow for Harriet.
That was the worst of all.
Every part of it brought pain and humiliation of some sort or another.
But compared with the evil to Harriet,
All was light.
And she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken,
More disgraced by misjudgment than she actually was,
Could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.
If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man,
I could have borne anything.
He might have doubled his presumption to me,
But poor Harriet!
How could she have been so deceived?
He protested he had never thought seriously of Harriet.
Never!
Emma looked back as well as she could but it was all confusion now.
She had taken up the idea she supposed and made everything bend to it.
His manners,
However,
Must have been unmarked,
Wavering and dubious,
Or she could not have been so misled.
The picture,
How eager he'd been about the picture,
And the charade,
And a hundred other circumstances.
Who could have seen through such thick-headed nonsense?
Certainly Emma had often,
Especially of late,
Thought his manners to herself unnecessarily gallant.
But it had passed as his way,
As a mere error of judgment of knowledge taste.
As one proof among others he'd not always lived in the best society.
That with all the gentleness of his address.
.
.
True elegance was sometimes wanting.
But till this very day she had never for an instant suspected it to mean anything but grateful respect to her as Harriet's friend.
To Mr John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the subject,
For the first start of its possibility.
There was no denying those brothers had penetration.
She remembered what Mr.
Lightly had once said to her about Mr.
Elton,
The caution he'd given,
The conviction he'd professed that Mr.
Elton would never marry indiscreetly.
It was dreadfully mortifying,
But Mr Elton was proving himself in many respects,
The very reverse of what she'd meant and believed him.
Proud,
Assuming,
Conceited,
Very full of his own claims and little concerned about the feelings of others.
Contrary to the usual course of things,
Mr Elton's wanting to pay his addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion.
His professions and proposals did him no service.
Emma thought nothing of his attachment and was insulted by his hopes.
He wanted to marry well,
And having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her pretended to be in love.
But she was perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that needed to be cared for.
There had been no real affection either in his language or his manners.
Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance.
But she could hardly devise any set of expressions or fancy any tone and voice less allied with real love.
She need not,
She decided,
Trouble herself to pity him.
Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her inferior in talent and all the elegancies of mind.
The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it.
But he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior.
He must know the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at Hartfield,
The younger branch of a very ancient family,
And that the Eltons were nobody.
The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable,
Being but a sort of notch in the Donnell Abbey estate,
To which all the rest of Highbury belonged.
But their fortune from other sources was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donnell Abbey itself in every other kind of consequence.
And the woodhouses had long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which Mr Elton had first entered not two years ago.
He had fancied her in love with him.
That evidently must have been his dependence.
And after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head,
Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop and admit her own behaviour to him had been so complacent and obliging,
So full of courtesy and attention,
As might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy like Mr.
Elton in fancying himself a very decided favourite.
If she had so misinterpreted his feelings,
She had little right to wonder that he,
With self-interest to blind him,
Should have mistaken hers.
The first error and the worst laid her door.
It was foolish and wrong to take so active a part in bringing any two people together.
It was adventuring too far,
Assuming too much.
Making light of what ought to be serious.
A trick of what ought to be simple.
She was quite as concerned and ashamed now.
And resolve to do such things no more.
Here have I,
Said she,
Actively taught.
Paul Harriot into being very much attached to this man.
She might never have thought of him but for me.
And she certainly never would have thought of him with hope if I had not assured her of his attachment.
She's as modest and humble as I used to think him.
Oh,
That I had been satisfied with persuading her not to accept young Martin.
There,
I was quite right.
That was well done of me.
But there I should have stopped.
And left the rest to time and chance.
I was introducing her into good company and giving her the opportunity of pleasing someone worth having.
But I ought not to have attempted more.
Now poor girl,
Her piece is cut up for some time.
But I have tried to be half a friend to her.
So very much,
I'm sure I have not an idea of anyone else who would be at all desirable.
William Cox No,
I could not endure William Cox,
A pert young lawyer.
Emma stopped to blush and laugh at her own relapse,
Then resumed a more serious,
Dispiriting cogitation upon what had been,
And might be,
And must be.
The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet,
And all that poor Harriet would be suffering with the awkwardness of future meetings,
The difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance.
Were enough to occupy her in a most unmirthful reflection some time longer,
And she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.
To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's,
Though under temporary gloom at night.
The return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits.
The youth and cheerfulness of mourning are in happy analogy and of powerful operation.
And if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed,
They will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.
Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she'd gone to bed.
More ready to see alleviations of the evil before her and to depend upon getting tolerably out of it.
It was a great consolation Mr Elton should not really be in love with her.
These were very cheering thoughts.
Harriet's nature should not be of that superior thought.
In which the feelings are most acute and retentive.
There should be no necessity for anybody's knowing what had passed,
Except the three principles.
And especially for her father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.
The weather was most favourable.
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 was now covered with snow.
And the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw.
Which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise.
No intercourse with Harriet was 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,
Therefore,
Which might fairly confine everyone at home,
And though Emma hoped and believed Mr Elton to be really taking comfort in some society or another,
It was very pleased 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,
Who no weather could keep entirely from them,
Ah,
Mr Knightley.
Why do you not stay at home like Paul,
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 everyone.
But with all the hopes of cheerfulness and all the present comfort of delay,
There was still such an evil hanging over Emma in the hour of explanation with Harriet,
As made it possible for her to ever be perfectly happy.
At ease.
