Host (Jane Austen Bedtime Stories)

He was afraid poor Isabella would not like it.

And there would be poor Emma in the carriage behind.

He did not know what they had best do.

They must keep as much together as they could.

And James was talked to and given a charge to go very slow and wait for the other carriage.

Isabella stepped in after her father.

John Knightley, forgetting that he did not belong to their party, stepped in after his wife very naturally, so that Emma found on being escorted and followed into the second carriage by Mr. Elton that the door was to be lawfully shut on them and that they were to have a tête-à-tête drive.

It would not have been the awkwardness of a moment.

It would have been rather a pleasure, previous to the suspicions of this very day.

She could have talked to him of Harriet, and the three quarters of a mile would have seemed but one.

But now, she would rather it had not happened.

She believed he had been drinking too much of Mr. Weston's good wine and felt sure that he would want to be talking nonsense.

To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the night.

But scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cut up, her hand seized, her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her, availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known,

hoping, fearing, adoring, ready to die if she refused him, but flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible.

It really was so,

Without scruple, without apology, without much apparent diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover.

She tried to stop him, but vainly.

He would go on and say it all.

Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to restrain herself when she did speak.