Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition.
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 17 Mr and Mrs John Knightley were not detained long at Hartfield.
The weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move,
And Mr.
Woodhouse,
Having as usual tried to persuade his daughter to stay behind with all her children,
Was obliged to see the whole party set off and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor Isabella.
The evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Miss Delton to Mr Woodhouse.
To say with Mr Elton's best compliments,
He was proposing to leave Highbury the following morning in his way to Bath.
Where in compliance with the pressing entreaties of some friends he had engaged to spend a few weeks and very much regretted the impossibility he was under from various circumstances of taking personal leave of Mr.
Woodhouse.
Emma was most agreeably surprised.
Mr Elton's absence just at this time was the very thing to be desired.
She admired him for contriving it,
Though not able to give him much credit for the manner in which it was announced.
Resentment could not have been more plainly spoken than in a civility to her father,
From which she was so pointedly excluded.
She had not even a share in his opening compliments.
Her name was not mentioned.
And there wasn't so striking a change in all this,
And such an ill-judged solemnity of leave-taking.
As she thought at first could not escape her father's suspicion.
It did,
However.
Her father was quite taken up with the surprise of so sudden a journey.
And his fears that Mr Elton might never get safely to the end of it and saw nothing extraordinary in his language at all.
Mr.
Woodhouse talked over his alarms.
And Emma was in spirits to persuade them away with all her usual promptitude.
She now resolved to keep Harriet no longer in the dark.
She had reason to believe her nearly recovered from her cold.
And it was desirable.
She should have as much time as possible for getting the better of her other complaint.
Before the gentlemen's return.
So she went to Mrs.
Goddard's the very next day to undergo the necessary penance of communication.
And a severe one it was.
She had to destroy all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding.
To appear in the ungracious character of the one preferred.
And acknowledge herself grossly mistaken and misjudging in all her ideas on one subject.
All her prophecies for the last six weeks.
The confession completely renewed her first shame.
The sight of Harriet's tears made her think she should never be in charity with herself again.
Harriet bore the intelligence very well.
Emma was in the humour to value simplicity and modesty to the utmost,
And all that was amiable,
All that ought to be attaching,
Seemed on Harriet's side,
Not her own.
Harriet did not consider herself as having anything to complain of.
The affection of such a man as Mr Alton would have been too great a distinction.
She could never have deserved him.
And nobody but so partial and kind a friend as Miss Woodhouse would have thought it possible.
Her tears fell abundantly,
But her grief was so truly heartless that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes.
And she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding.
Really for the time convinced Harriet was the superior creature of the two.
It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant.
But Emma left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet.
Her second duty now,
Inferior only to her father's claims,
Was to promote Harriet's comfort and endeavour to prove her own affection in some better method than by matchmaking.
She got her to Hartfield and showed her the most unvarying kindness,
Striving to occupy and amuse her by books and conversation,
And to drive Mr.
Elton from her thoughts.
Time,
MNU must be allowed for this being thoroughly done.
It seemed to her reasonable that at Harriet's age,
And with the entire extinction of all hope.
.
.
Such a progress might be made towards a state of composure by the time of Mr Elton's return.
Harriet did think him all perfection.
And maintain the non-existence of anybody equal to him in personal goodness.
And she did in truth prove herself more resolutely in love than Emma had foreseen.
But yet it appeared to her so natural,
So inevitable,
To strike against an inclination of that sort unrequited.
That she could not comprehend its continuing very long in equal force.
If Mr Elton,
On his return,
Made his own indifference as evident and indubitable as she could not doubt he would anxiously do.
She could not imagine Harriet's persisting to place her happiness in the sight or the recollection of him.
Their being fixed,
So absolutely fixed in the same place was bad for each,
For all three.
Not one of them had the power of removal or of effecting any material change of society.
They must encounter each other.
And they must make the best of it.
Harriet was further unfortunate in the tone of her companions at Mrs.
Goddard's.
Mr Elton being the adoration of all the teachers and great girls in the school And it must be at Hartfield only that she could have any chance of hearing him spoken of with cooling moderation or repellent truth.
Where the wound had been given,
There must be the cure found,
If anywhere.
And Emma felt that,
Till she saw her in the way of cure,
There could be no true peace.
For herself.
