Colonel Brandon is telling Elinor his history and how his brother's marriage failed:
"My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly."
My but that is wonderful: "his pleasures were not what they ought to have been". The next time someone tells you that Austen is sexually repressed, read them this sentence and ask them to explain what that might possibly mean. She doesn't dwell on sex nor does she get explicit but she knows exactly what these things are about.
And how unlike the namby-pamby nonsense that passes for ethics today was a morality that assumed it was important to have the right pleasures.
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