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;—which poor Isabella, passing her life with those she
doated on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always
innocently busy, might have been a model of right feminine
happiness.
The evening of the very day on which they went brought a note
from Mr. Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, a long, civil, ceremonious note,
to say, with Mr. Elton's best compliments, "that he was proposing
to leave Highbury the following morning in his
