Agnes feels her heart beating when Mr. Weston engages her in attentive conversation, a physical cue that suggests her growing romantic attraction to him. Rosalie’s claim that she has “shot [Mr. Weston] through the heart” emphasizes that she sees flirtation as a kind of violent status game: she is a hunter, Mr. Weston is her prey, and she establishes her superiority over him by figuratively “shooting” him. That Agnes
prays Rosalie is wrong emphasizes the centrality of religion and shared religious values to Agnes’s crush on Mr. Weston.