Just finished reading "Sense and Sensibility" for the umpteenth time and something caught my attention this time. It's a pre-London scene in which Colonel Brandon asks Elinor if Marianne still holds to her belief that one can never have a second attachment. It occurred to me this time that perhaps he's not asking in hopes that maybe someday Marianne will return his affection, as I had assumed in previous readings. Perhaps he's asking it because he is in a state of wonder over the very fact that for the first time since loving, losing, and mourning his Eliza, he actually finds himself forming a second attachment. And maybe he hopes to gain some insight into his own feelings by asking Elinor to talk about Marianne's favorite maxim. I'm going to put out this question on the Janeites list and see if anyone has a theory about this.
I'm also wondering, as I have wondered many times before, how exactly Mrs. Smith found out that Willoughby fathered Eliza Williams's child and abandoned her. It wasn't exactly common knowledge, so how would a reclusive old lady learn of it through some mysterious relative that Willoughby alludes to?
Another question for one of my Austen listservs, while I'm at it...
