It will give you every thing that you want-consideration, independence, a proper home-it will fix you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy for ever.
This, Harriet, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in either of us."
"Dear Miss Woodhouse!"-and "Dear Miss Woodhouse," was all that Harriet, with many tender embraces could articulate at first; but when they did arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she ought. Mr. Elton's superiority had very ample acknowledgment.
"Whatever you say is always right," cried Harriet, "and therefore I suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not have imagined it. It is so much beyond any thing I deserve.
Mr. Elton, who might marry any body! There cannot be two opinions about him. He is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses-"To Miss ." Dear me, how clever!-Could it really be meant for me?"
"I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that.
It is a certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by matter-of-fact prose."
"It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure, a month ago, I had no more idea myself!-The strangest things do take place!"
"When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted-they do indeed-and really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so evidently, so palpably desirable-what courts the pre-arrangement of other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form.
You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one another by every circumstance of your respective homes.