Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another! -- and that other, a man who had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, -- whom, two years before, she had considered too old to be married, -- and who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!