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Jane Austen

 Pride And Prejudice

I

It is a truth uni­ver­sally ac­know­ledged, that a single man in pos­ses­sion of a good for­tune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feel­ings or views of such a man may be on his first en­ter­ing a neigh­bour­hood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the sur­round­ing fam­il­ies, that he is con­sidered as the right­ful prop­erty of some one or other of their daugh­ters.

“My dear Mr. Ben­net,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Neth­er­field Park is let at last?”

Mr. Ben­net replied that he had not.

“But it is,” re­turned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Ben­net made no an­swer.

“Do not you want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife im­pa­tiently.

“You want to tell me, and I have no ob­jec­tion to hear­ing it.”

This was in­vit­a­tion enough.

“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Neth­er­field is taken by a young man of large for­tune from the north of Eng­land; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much de­lighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Mor­ris im­me­di­ately; that he is to take pos­ses­sion be­fore Mi­chael­mas, and some of his ser­vants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

“What is his name?”

“Bingley.”

“Is he mar­ried or single?”

“Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large for­tune; four or five thou­sand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? how can it af­fect them?”

“My dear Mr. Ben­net,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tire­some! You must know that I am think­ing of his mar­ry­ing one of them.”

“Is that his design in set­tling here?”

“Design! non­sense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and there­fore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”

“I see no oc­ca­sion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by them­selves, which per­haps will be still bet­ter, for as you are as hand­some as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party.”

“My dear, you flat­ter me. I cer­tainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pre­tend to be any­thing ex­traordin­ary now. When a wo­man has five grown up daugh­ters, she ought to give over think­ing of her own beauty.”

“In such cases, a wo­man has not of­ten much beauty to think of.”

“But, my dear, you must in­deed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neigh­bour­hood.”

“It is more than I en­gage for, I as­sure you.”

“But con­sider your daugh­ters. Only think what an es­tab­lish­ment it would be for one of them. Sir Wil­liam and Lady Lu­cas are de­term­ined to go, merely on that ac­count, for in gen­eral you know they visit no new­comers. Indeed you must go, for it will be im­possible for us to visit him, if you do not.”

“You are over scru­pu­lous surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to as­sure him of my hearty con­sent to his mar­ry­ing which ever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”

“I de­sire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit bet­ter than the oth­ers; and I am sure she is not half so hand­some as Jane, nor half so good hu­moured as Ly­dia. But you are al­ways giv­ing her the pref­er­ence.”

“They have none of them much to re­com­mend them,” replied he; “they are all silly and ig­nor­ant like other girls; but Lizzy has some­thing more of quick­ness than her sis­ters.”

“Mr. Ben­net, how can you ab­use your own chil­dren in such a way? You take de­light in vex­ing me. You have no com­pas­sion on my poor nerves.”

“You mis­take me, my dear. I have a high re­spect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you men­tion them with con­sid­er­a­tion these twenty years at least.”

“Ah! you do not know what I suf­fer.”

“But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thou­sand a year come into the neigh­bour­hood.”

“It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come since you will not visit them.”

“Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.”

Mr. Ben­net was so odd a mix­ture of quick parts, sar­castic hu­mour, re­serve, and caprice, that the ex­per­i­ence of three and twenty years had been in­suf­fi­cient to make his wife un­der­stand his char­ac­ter. Her mind was less dif­fi­cult to de­velop. She was a wo­man of mean un­der­stand­ing, little in­form­a­tion, and un­cer­tain tem­per. When she was dis­con­ten­ted she fan­cied her­self nervous. The busi­ness of her life was to get her daugh­ters mar­ried; its solace was vis­it­ing and news.

II

Mr. Ben­net was among the earli­est of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had al­ways in­ten­ded to visit him, though to the last al­ways as­sur­ing his wife that he should not go; and till the even­ing after the visit was paid, she had no know­ledge of it. It was then dis­closed in the fol­low­ing man­ner. Ob­serving his second daugh­ter em­ployed in trim­ming a hat, he sud­denly ad­dressed her with:

“I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.”

“We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes,” said her mother re­sent­fully, “since we are not to visit.”

“But you for­get, mama,” said El­iza­beth, “that we shall meet him at the as­sem­blies, and that Mrs. Long has prom­ised to in­tro­duce him.”

“I do not be­lieve Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hy­po­crit­ical wo­man, and I have no opin­ion of her.”

“No more have I,” said Mr. Ben­net; “and I am glad to find that you do not de­pend on her serving you.”

Mrs. Ben­net deigned not to make any reply; but un­able to con­tain her­self, began scold­ing one of her daugh­ters.

“Don’t keep cough­ing so, Kitty, for heaven’s sake! Have a little com­pas­sion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”

“Kitty has no dis­cre­tion in her coughs,” said her father; “she times them ill.”

“I do not cough for my own amuse­ment,” replied Kitty fret­fully.

“When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?”

“To­mor­row fort­night.”

“Aye, so it is,” cried her mother, “and Mrs. Long does not come back till the day be­fore; so, it will be im­possible for her to in­tro­duce him, for she will not know him her­self.”

“Then, my dear, you may have the ad­vant­age of your friend, and in­tro­duce Mr. Bingley to her.”

“Im­possible, Mr. Ben­net, im­possible, when I am not ac­quain­ted with him my­self; how can you be so teas­ing?”

“I hon­our your cir­cum­spec­tion. A fort­night’s ac­quaint­ance is cer­tainly very little. One can­not know what a man really is by the end of a fort­night. But if we do not ven­ture, some­body else will; and after all, Mrs. Long and her nieces must stand their chance; and there­fore, as she will think it an act of kind­ness, if you de­cline the of­fice, I will take it on my­self.”

The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Ben­net said only, “Non­sense, non­sense!”

“What can be the mean­ing of that em­phatic ex­clam­a­tion?” cried he. “Do you con­sider the forms of in­tro­duc­tion, and the stress that is laid on them, as non­sense? I can­not quite agree with you there. What say you, Mary? for you are a young lady of deep re­flec­tion I know, and read great books, and make ex­tracts.”

Mary wished to say some­thing very sens­ible, but knew not how.

“While Mary is ad­just­ing her ideas,” he con­tin­ued, “let us re­turn to Mr. Bingley.”

“I am sick of Mr. Bingley,” cried his wife.

“I am sorry to hear that; but why did not you tell me so be­fore? If I had known as much this morn­ing, I cer­tainly would not have called on him. It is very un­lucky; but as I have ac­tu­ally paid the visit, we can­not es­cape the ac­quaint­ance now.”

The as­ton­ish­ment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Ben­net per­haps sur­pass­ing the rest; though when the first tu­mult of joy was over, she began to de­clare that it was what she had ex­pec­ted all the while.

“How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Ben­net! But I knew I should per­suade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to neg­lect such an ac­quaint­ance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morn­ing, and never said a word about it till now.”

“Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose,” said Mr. Ben­net; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fa­tigued with the rap­tures of his wife.

“What an ex­cel­lent father you have, girls,” said she, when the door was shut. “I do not know how you will ever make him amends for his kind­ness; or me either, for that mat­ter. At our time of life, it is not so pleas­ant, I can tell you, to be mak­ing new ac­quaint­ance every day; but for your sakes, we would do any­thing. Ly­dia, my love, though you are the young­est, I dare say Mr. Bingley will dance with you at the next ball.”

“Oh!” said Ly­dia stoutly, “I am not afraid; for though I am the young­est, I’m the tallest.”

The rest of the even­ing was spent in con­jec­tur­ing how soon he would re­turn Mr. Ben­net’s visit, and de­term­in­ing when they should ask him to din­ner.

III

Not all that Mrs. Ben­net, how­ever, with the as­sist­ance of her five daugh­ters, could ask on the sub­ject was suf­fi­cient to draw from her hus­band any sat­is­fact­ory de­scrip­tion of Mr. Bingley. They at­tacked him in vari­ous ways; with bare­faced ques­tions, in­geni­ous sup­pos­i­tions, and dis­tant sur­mises; but he eluded the skill of them all; and they were at last ob­liged to ac­cept the second­hand in­tel­li­gence of their neigh­bour Lady Lu­cas. Her re­port was highly fa­vour­able. Sir Wil­liam had been de­lighted with him. He was quite young, won­der­fully hand­some, ex­tremely agree­able, and to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next as­sembly with a large party. Noth­ing could be more de­light­ful! To be fond of dan­cing was a cer­tain step to­wards fall­ing in love; and very lively hopes of Mr. Bingley’s heart were en­ter­tained.

“If I can but see one of my daugh­ters hap­pily settled at Neth­er­field,” said Mrs. Ben­net to her hus­band, “and all the oth­ers equally well mar­ried, I shall have noth­ing to wish for.”

In a few days Mr. Bingley re­turned Mr. Ben­net’s visit, and sat about ten minutes with him in his lib­rary. He had en­ter­tained hopes of be­ing ad­mit­ted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose beauty he had heard much; but he saw only the father. The ladies were some­what more for­tu­nate, for they had the ad­vant­age of as­cer­tain­ing from an up­per win­dow, that he wore a blue coat and rode a black horse.

An in­vit­a­tion to din­ner was soon af­ter­wards dis­patched; and already had Mrs. Ben­net planned the courses that were to do credit to her house­keep­ing, when an an­swer ar­rived which de­ferred it all. Mr. Bingley was ob­liged to be in town the fol­low­ing day, and con­sequently un­able to ac­cept the hon­our of their in­vit­a­tion, etc. Mrs. Ben­net was quite dis­con­cer­ted. She could not ima­gine what busi­ness he could have in town so soon after his ar­rival in Hert­ford­shire; and she began to fear that he might be al­ways fly­ing about from one place to an­other, and never settled at Neth­er­field as he ought to be. Lady Lu­cas quieted her fears a little by start­ing the idea of his be­ing gone to Lon­don only to get a large party for the ball; and a re­port soon fol­lowed that Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and seven gen­tle­men with him to the as­sembly. The girls grieved over such a num­ber of ladies; but were com­for­ted the day be­fore the ball by hear­ing, that in­stead of twelve, he had brought only six with him from Lon­don, his five sis­ters and a cousin. And when the party entered the as­sembly room, it con­sisted of only five al­to­gether; Mr. Bingley, his two sis­ters, the hus­band of the eld­est, and an­other young man.

Mr. Bingley was good look­ing and gen­tle­man-like; he had a pleas­ant coun­ten­ance, and easy, un­af­fected man­ners. His sis­ters were fine wo­men, with an air of de­cided fash­ion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gen­tle­man; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the at­ten­tion of the room by his fine, tall per­son, hand­some fea­tures, noble mien; and the re­port which was in gen­eral cir­cu­la­tion within five minutes after his en­trance, of his hav­ing ten thou­sand a year. The gen­tle­men pro­nounced him to be a fine fig­ure of a man, the ladies de­clared he was much hand­somer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great ad­mir­a­tion for about half the even­ing, till his man­ners gave a dis­gust which turned the tide of his pop­ular­ity; for he was dis­covered to be proud, to be above his com­pany, and above be­ing pleased; and not all his large es­tate in Derby­shire could then save him from hav­ing a most for­bid­ding, dis­agree­able coun­ten­ance, and be­ing un­worthy to be com­pared with his friend.

Mr. Bingley had soon made him­self ac­quain­ted with all the prin­cipal people in the room; he was lively and un­re­served, danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giv­ing one him­self at Neth­er­field. Such ami­able qual­it­ies must speak for them­selves. What a con­trast between him and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, de­clined be­ing in­tro­duced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the even­ing in walk­ing about the room, speak­ing oc­ca­sion­ally to one of his own party. His char­ac­ter was de­cided. He was the proudest, most dis­agree­able man in the world, and every­body hoped that he would never come there again. Amongst the most vi­ol­ent against him was Mrs. Ben­net, whose dis­like of his gen­eral be­ha­viour, was sharpened into par­tic­u­lar re­sent­ment, by his hav­ing slighted one of her daugh­ters.

El­iza­beth Ben­net had been ob­liged, by the scarcity of gen­tle­men, to sit down for two dances; and dur­ing part of that time, Mr. Darcy had been stand­ing near enough for her to over­hear a con­ver­sa­tion between him and Mr. Bingley, who came from the dance for a few minutes, to press his friend to join it.

“Come, Darcy,” said he, “I must have you dance. I hate to see you stand­ing about by your­self in this stu­pid man­ner. You had much bet­ter dance.”

“I cer­tainly shall not. You know how I de­test it, un­less I am par­tic­u­larly ac­quain­ted with my part­ner. At such an as­sembly as this, it would be in­sup­port­able. Your sis­ters are en­gaged, and there is not an­other wo­man in the room whom it would not be a pun­ish­ment to me to stand up with.”

“I would not be so fas­ti­di­ous as you are,” cried Bingley, “for a king­dom! Upon my hon­our, I never met with so many pleas­ant girls in my life, as I have this even­ing; and there are sev­eral of them you see un­com­monly pretty.”

“You are dan­cing with the only hand­some girl in the room,” said Mr. Darcy, look­ing at the eld­est Miss Ben­net.

“Oh! she is the most beau­ti­ful creature I ever be­held! But there is one of her sis­ters sit­ting down just be­hind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say, very agree­able. Do let me ask my part­ner to in­tro­duce you.”

“Which do you mean?” and turn­ing round, he looked for a mo­ment at El­iza­beth, till catch­ing her eye, he with­drew his own and coldly said, “She is tol­er­able; but not hand­some enough to tempt me; and I am in no hu­mour at present to give con­sequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had bet­ter re­turn to your part­ner and en­joy her smiles, for you are wast­ing your time with me.”

Mr. Bingley fol­lowed his ad­vice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and El­iza­beth re­mained with no very cor­dial feel­ings to­wards him. She told the story how­ever with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, play­ful dis­pos­i­tion, which de­lighted in any­thing ri­dicu­lous.

The even­ing al­to­gether passed off pleas­antly to the whole fam­ily. Mrs. Ben­net had seen her eld­est daugh­ter much ad­mired by the Neth­er­field party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, and she had been dis­tin­guished by his sis­ters. Jane was as much grat­i­fied by this, as her mother could be, though in a quieter way. El­iza­beth felt Jane’s pleas­ure. Mary had heard her­self men­tioned to Miss Bingley as the most ac­com­plished girl in the neigh­bour­hood; and Cath­er­ine and Ly­dia had been for­tu­nate enough to be never without part­ners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball. They re­turned there­fore in good spir­its to Long­bourn, the vil­lage where they lived, and of which they were the prin­cipal in­hab­it­ants. They found Mr. Ben­net still up. With a book he was re­gard­less of time; and on the present oc­ca­sion he had a good deal of curi­os­ity as to the event of an even­ing which had raised such splen­did ex­pect­a­tions. He had rather hoped that all his wife’s views on the stranger would be dis­ap­poin­ted; but he soon found that he had a very dif­fer­ent story to hear.

“Oh! my dear Mr. Ben­net,” as she entered the room, “we have had a most de­light­ful even­ing, a most ex­cel­lent ball. I wish you had been there. Jane was so ad­mired, noth­ing could be like it. Every­body said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beau­ti­ful, and danced with her twice. Only think of that my dear; he ac­tu­ally danced with her twice; and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time. First of all, he asked Miss Lu­cas. I was so vexed to see him stand up with her; but, how­ever, he did not ad­mire her at all: in­deed, nobody can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was go­ing down the dance. So, he en­quired who she was, and got in­tro­duced, and asked her for the two next. Then, the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lu­cas, and the two fifth with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger—”

“If he had had any com­pas­sion for me,” cried her hus­band im­pa­tiently, “he would not have danced half so much! For God’s sake, say no more of his part­ners. Oh! that he had sprained his ankle in the first dance!”

“Oh! my dear,” con­tin­ued Mrs. Ben­net, “I am quite de­lighted with him. He is so ex­cess­ively hand­some! and his sis­ters are charm­ing wo­men. I never in my life saw any­thing more el­eg­ant than their dresses. I dare say the lace upon Mrs. Hurst’s gown—”

Here she was in­ter­rup­ted again. Mr. Ben­net pro­tested against any de­scrip­tion of finery. She was there­fore ob­liged to seek an­other branch of the sub­ject, and re­lated, with much bit­ter­ness of spirit and some ex­ag­ger­a­tion, the shock­ing rude­ness of Mr. Darcy.

“But I can as­sure you,” she ad­ded, “that Lizzy does not lose much by not suit­ing his fancy; for he is a most dis­agree­able, hor­rid man, not at all worth pleas­ing. So high and so con­ceited that there was no en­dur­ing him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancy­ing him­self so very great! Not hand­some enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set downs. I quite de­test the man.”

IV

When Jane and El­iza­beth were alone, the former, who had been cau­tious in her praise of Mr. Bingley be­fore, ex­pressed to her sis­ter how very much she ad­mired him.

“He is just what a young man ought to be,” said she, “sens­ible, good hu­moured, lively; and I never saw such happy man­ners!—so much ease, with such per­fect good breed­ing!”

“He is also hand­some,” replied El­iza­beth, “which a young man ought like­wise to be, if he pos­sibly can. His char­ac­ter is thereby com­plete.”

“I was very much flattered by his ask­ing me to dance a second time. I did not ex­pect such a com­pli­ment.”

“Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great dif­fer­ence between us. Com­pli­ments al­ways take you by sur­prise, and me never. What could be more nat­ural than his ask­ing you again? He could not help see­ing that you were about five times as pretty as every other wo­man in the room. No thanks to his gal­lantry for that. Well, he cer­tainly is very agree­able, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stu­pider per­son.”

“Dear Lizzy!”

“Oh! you are a great deal too apt you know, to like people in gen­eral. You never see a fault in any­body. All the world are good and agree­able in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a hu­man be­ing in my life.”

“I would wish not to be hasty in cen­sur­ing any­one; but I al­ways speak what I think.”

“I know you do; and it is that which makes the won­der. With your good sense, to be so hon­estly blind to the fol­lies and non­sense of oth­ers! Af­fect­a­tion of cand­our is com­mon enough;—one meets it every­where. But to be can­did without os­ten­ta­tion or design—to take the good of every­body’s char­ac­ter and make it still bet­ter, and say noth­ing of the bad—be­longs to you alone. And so, you like this man’s sis­ters too, do you? Their man­ners are not equal to his.”

“Cer­tainly not; at first. But they are very pleas­ing wo­men when you con­verse with them. Miss Bingley is to live with her brother and keep his house; and I am much mis­taken if we shall not find a very charm­ing neigh­bour in her.”

El­iza­beth listened in si­lence, but was not con­vinced; their be­ha­viour at the as­sembly had not been cal­cu­lated to please in gen­eral; and with more quick­ness of ob­ser­va­tion and less pli­ancy of tem­per than her sis­ter, and with a judg­ment too un­as­sailed by any at­ten­tion to her­self, she was very little dis­posed to ap­prove them. They were in fact very fine ladies; not de­fi­cient in good hu­mour when they were pleased, nor in the power of be­ing agree­able where they chose it; but proud and con­ceited. They were rather hand­some, had been edu­cated in one of the first private sem­in­ar­ies in town, had a for­tune of twenty thou­sand pounds, were in the habit of spend­ing more than they ought, and of as­so­ci­at­ing with people of rank; and were there­fore in every re­spect en­titled to think well of them­selves, and meanly of oth­ers. They were of a re­spect­able fam­ily in the north of Eng­land; a cir­cum­stance more deeply im­pressed on their memor­ies than that their brother’s for­tune and their own had been ac­quired by trade.

Mr. Bingley in­her­ited prop­erty to the amount of nearly a hun­dred thou­sand pounds from his father, who had in­ten­ded to pur­chase an es­tate, but did not live to do it. Mr. Bingley in­ten­ded it like­wise, and some­times made choice of his county; but as he was now provided with a good house and the liberty of a manor, it was doubt­ful to many of those who best knew the eas­i­ness of his tem­per, whether he might not spend the re­mainder of his days at Neth­er­field, and leave the next gen­er­a­tion to pur­chase.

His sis­ters were very anxious for his hav­ing an es­tate of his own; but though he was now es­tab­lished only as a ten­ant, Miss Bingley was by no means un­will­ing to preside at his table, nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had mar­ried a man of more fash­ion than for­tune, less dis­posed to con­sider his house as her home when it suited her. Mr. Bingley had not been of age two years, when he was temp­ted by an ac­ci­dental re­com­mend­a­tion to look at Neth­er­field House. He did look at it and into it for half an hour, was pleased with the situ­ation and the prin­cipal rooms, sat­is­fied with what the owner said in its praise, and took it im­me­di­ately.

Between him and Darcy there was a very steady friend­ship, in spite of a great op­pos­i­tion of char­ac­ter. Bingley was en­deared to Darcy by the eas­i­ness, open­ness, ductil­ity of his tem­per, though no dis­pos­i­tion could of­fer a greater con­trast to his own, and though with his own he never ap­peared dis­sat­is­fied. On the strength of Darcy’s re­gard Bingley had the firmest re­li­ance, and of his judg­ment the highest opin­ion. In un­der­stand­ing Darcy was the su­per­ior. Bingley was by no means de­fi­cient, but Darcy was clever. He was at the same time haughty, re­served, and fas­ti­di­ous, and his man­ners, though well bred, were not in­vit­ing. In that re­spect his friend had greatly the ad­vant­age. Bingley was sure of be­ing liked wherever he ap­peared, Darcy was con­tinu­ally giv­ing of­fence.

The man­ner in which they spoke of the Meryton as­sembly was suf­fi­ciently char­ac­ter­istic. Bingley had never met with pleas­anter people or pret­tier girls in his life; every­body had been most kind and at­tent­ive to him, there had been no form­al­ity, no stiff­ness, he had soon felt ac­quain­ted with all the room; and as to Miss Ben­net, he could not con­ceive an an­gel more beau­ti­ful. Darcy, on the con­trary, had seen a col­lec­tion of people in whom there was little beauty and no fash­ion, for none of whom he had felt the smal­lest in­terest, and from none re­ceived either at­ten­tion or pleas­ure. Miss Ben­net he ac­know­ledged to be pretty, but she smiled too much.

Mrs. Hurst and her sis­ter al­lowed it to be so—but still they ad­mired her and liked her, and pro­nounced her to be a sweet girl, and one whom they should not ob­ject to know more of. Miss Ben­net was there­fore es­tab­lished as a sweet girl, and their brother felt au­thor­ised by such com­mend­a­tion to think of her as he chose.

V

Within a short walk of Long­bourn lived a fam­ily with whom the Ben­nets were par­tic­u­larly in­tim­ate. Sir Wil­liam Lu­cas had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tol­er­able for­tune and risen to the hon­our of knight­hood by an ad­dress to the King, dur­ing his may­or­alty. The dis­tinc­tion had per­haps been felt too strongly. It had given him a dis­gust to his busi­ness and to his res­id­ence in a small mar­ket town; and quit­ting them both, he had re­moved with his fam­ily to a house about a mile from Meryton, de­nom­in­ated from that period Lu­cas Lodge, where he could think with pleas­ure of his own im­port­ance, and un­shackled by busi­ness, oc­cupy him­self solely in be­ing civil to all the world. For though elated by his rank, it did not render him su­per­cili­ous; on the con­trary, he was all at­ten­tion to every­body. By nature in­of­fens­ive, friendly and ob­li­ging, his present­a­tion at St. James’s had made him cour­teous.

Lady Lu­cas was a very good kind of wo­man, not too clever to be a valu­able neigh­bour to Mrs. Ben­net. They had sev­eral chil­dren. The eld­est of them, a sens­ible, in­tel­li­gent young wo­man, about twenty-seven, was El­iza­beth’s in­tim­ate friend.

That the Miss Lu­cases and the Miss Ben­nets should meet to talk over a ball was ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary; and the morn­ing after the as­sembly brought the former to Long­bourn to hear and to com­mu­nic­ate.

“You began the even­ing well, Char­lotte,” said Mrs. Ben­net with civil self-com­mand to Miss Lu­cas. “You were Mr. Bingley’s first choice.”

“Yes;—but he seemed to like his second bet­ter.”

“Oh!—you mean Jane, I sup­pose—be­cause he danced with her twice. To be sure that did seem as if he ad­mired her—in­deed I rather be­lieve he did—I heard some­thing about it—but I hardly know what—some­thing about Mr. Robin­son.”

“Per­haps you mean what I over­heard between him and Mr. Robin­son; did not I men­tion it to you? Mr. Robin­son’s ask­ing him how he liked our Meryton as­sem­blies, and whether he did not think there were a great many pretty wo­men in the room, and which he thought the pret­ti­est? and his an­swer­ing im­me­di­ately to the last ques­tion—Oh! the eld­est Miss Ben­net bey­ond a doubt, there can­not be two opin­ions on that point.”

“Upon my word!—Well, that was very de­cided in­deed—that does seem as if—but how­ever, it may all come to noth­ing you know.”

“My over­hear­ings were more to the pur­pose than yours, El­iza,” said Char­lotte. “Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listen­ing to as his friend, is he?—Poor El­iza!—to be only just tol­er­able.”

“I beg you would not put it into Lizzy’s head to be vexed by his ill-treat­ment; for he is such a dis­agree­able man that it would be quite a mis­for­tune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long told me last night that he sat close to her for half an hour without once open­ing his lips.”

“Are you quite sure, Ma’am?—is not there a little mis­take?” said Jane. “I cer­tainly saw Mr. Darcy speak­ing to her.”

“Aye—be­cause she asked him at last how he liked Neth­er­field, and he could not help an­swer­ing her;—but she said he seemed very angry at be­ing spoke to.”

“Miss Bingley told me,” said Jane, “that he never speaks much un­less among his in­tim­ate ac­quaint­ance. With them he is re­mark­ably agree­able.”

“I do not be­lieve a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very agree­able he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how it was; every­body says that he is ate up with pride, and I dare say he had heard some­how that Mrs. Long does not keep a car­riage, and had come to the ball in a hack chaise.”

“I do not mind his not talk­ing to Mrs. Long,” said Miss Lu­cas, “but I wish he had danced with El­iza.”

“Another time, Lizzy,” said her mother, “I would not dance with him, if I were you.”

“I be­lieve, Ma’am, I may safely prom­ise you never to dance with him.”

“His pride,” said Miss Lu­cas, “does not of­fend me so much as pride of­ten does, be­cause there is an ex­cuse for it. One can­not won­der that so very fine a young man, with fam­ily, for­tune, everything in his fa­vour, should think highly of him­self. If I may so ex­press it, he has a right to be proud.”

“That is very true,” replied El­iza­beth, “and I could eas­ily for­give his pride, if he had not mor­ti­fied mine.”

“Pride,” ob­served Mary, who piqued her­self upon the solid­ity of her re­flec­tions, “is a very com­mon fail­ing I be­lieve. By all that I have ever read, I am con­vinced that it is very com­mon in­deed, that hu­man nature is par­tic­u­larly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cher­ish a feel­ing of self-com­pla­cency on the score of some qual­ity or other, real or ima­gin­ary. Van­ity and pride are dif­fer­ent things, though the words are of­ten used syn­on­im­ously. A per­son may be proud without be­ing vain. Pride relates more to our opin­ion of ourselves, van­ity to what we would have oth­ers think of us.”

“If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy,” cried a young Lu­cas who came with his sis­ters, “I should not care how proud I was. I would keep a pack of fox­hounds, and drink a bottle of wine every day.”

“Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought,” said Mrs. Ben­net; “and if I were to see you at it I should take away your bottle dir­ectly.”

The boy pro­tested that she should not; she con­tin­ued to de­clare that she would, and the ar­gu­ment ended only with the visit.

VI

The ladies of Long­bourn soon waited on those of Neth­er­field. The visit was re­turned in due form. Miss Ben­net’s pleas­ing man­ners grew on the good will of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and though the mother was found to be in­tol­er­able and the younger sis­ters not worth speak­ing to, a wish of be­ing bet­ter ac­quain­ted with them, was ex­pressed to­wards the two eld­est. By Jane this at­ten­tion was re­ceived with the greatest pleas­ure; but El­iza­beth still saw su­per­cili­ous­ness in their treat­ment of every­body, hardly ex­cept­ing even her sis­ter, and could not like them; though their kind­ness to Jane, such as it was, had a value as arising in all prob­ab­il­ity from the in­flu­ence of their brother’s ad­mir­a­tion. It was gen­er­ally evid­ent whenever they met, that he did ad­mire her; and to her it was equally evid­ent that Jane was yield­ing to the pref­er­ence which she had be­gun to en­ter­tain for him from the first, and was in a way to be very much in love; but she con­sidered with pleas­ure that it was not likely to be dis­covered by the world in gen­eral, since Jane united with great strength of feel­ing, a com­pos­ure of tem­per and a uni­form cheer­ful­ness of man­ner, which would guard her from the sus­pi­cions of the im­per­tin­ent. She men­tioned this to her friend Miss Lu­cas.

“It may per­haps be pleas­ant,” replied Char­lotte, “to be able to im­pose on the pub­lic in such a case; but it is some­times a dis­ad­vant­age to be so very guarded. If a wo­man con­ceals her af­fec­tion with the same skill from the ob­ject of it, she may lose the op­por­tun­ity of fix­ing him; and it will then be but poor con­sol­a­tion to be­lieve the world equally in the dark. There is so much of grat­it­ude or van­ity in al­most every at­tach­ment, that it is not safe to leave any to it­self. We can all be­gin freely—a slight pref­er­ence is nat­ural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without en­cour­age­ment. In nine cases out of ten, a wo­man had bet­ter show more af­fec­tion than she feels. Bingley likes your sis­ter un­doubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.”

“But she does help him on, as much as her nature will al­low. If I can per­ceive her re­gard for him, he must be a sim­pleton in­deed not to dis­cover it too.”

“Re­mem­ber, El­iza, that he does not know Jane’s dis­pos­i­tion as you do.”

“But if a wo­man is par­tial to a man, and does not en­deav­our to con­ceal it, he must find it out.”

“Per­haps he must, if he sees enough of her. But though Bingley and Jane meet tol­er­ably of­ten, it is never for many hours to­gether; and as they al­ways see each other in large mixed parties, it is im­possible that every mo­ment should be em­ployed in con­vers­ing to­gether. Jane should there­fore make the most of every half hour in which she can com­mand his at­ten­tion. When she is se­cure of him, there will be leis­ure for fall­ing in love as much as she chooses.”

“Your plan is a good one,” replied El­iza­beth, “where noth­ing is in ques­tion but the de­sire of be­ing well mar­ried; and if I were de­term­ined to get a rich hus­band, or any hus­band, I dare say I should ad­opt it. But these are not Jane’s feel­ings; she is not act­ing by design. As yet, she can­not even be cer­tain of the de­gree of her own re­gard, nor of its reas­on­able­ness. She has known him only a fort­night. She danced four dances with him at Meryton; she saw him one morn­ing at his own house, and has since dined in com­pany with him four times. This is not quite enough to make her un­der­stand his char­ac­ter.”

“Not as you rep­res­ent it. Had she merely dined with him, she might only have dis­covered whether he had a good ap­pet­ite; but you must re­mem­ber that four even­ings have been also spent to­gether—and four even­ings may do a great deal.”

“Yes; these four even­ings have en­abled them to as­cer­tain that they both like Vingt-un bet­ter than Com­merce; but with re­spect to any other lead­ing char­ac­ter­istic, I do not ima­gine that much has been un­fol­ded.”

“Well,” said Char­lotte, “I wish Jane suc­cess with all my heart; and if she were mar­ried to him to­mor­row, I should think she had as good a chance of hap­pi­ness, as if she were to be study­ing his char­ac­ter for a twelve­month. Hap­pi­ness in mar­riage is en­tirely a mat­ter of chance. If the dis­pos­i­tions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so sim­ilar be­fore­hand, it does not ad­vance their fe­li­city in the least. They al­ways con­tinue to grow suf­fi­ciently un­like af­ter­wards to have their share of vex­a­tion; and it is bet­ter to know as little as pos­sible of the de­fects of the per­son with whom you are to pass your life.”

“You make me laugh, Char­lotte; but it is not sound. You know it is not sound, and that you would never act in this way your­self.”

Oc­cu­pied in ob­serving Mr. Bingley’s at­ten­tions to her sis­ter, El­iza­beth was far from sus­pect­ing that she was her­self be­com­ing an ob­ject of some in­terest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely al­lowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without ad­mir­a­tion at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to cri­ti­cise. But no sooner had he made it clear to him­self and his friends that she had hardly a good fea­ture in her face, than he began to find it was rendered un­com­monly in­tel­li­gent by the beau­ti­ful ex­pres­sion of her dark eyes. To this dis­cov­ery suc­ceeded some oth­ers equally mor­ti­fy­ing. Though he had de­tec­ted with a crit­ical eye more than one fail­ure of per­fect sym­metry in her form, he was forced to ac­know­ledge her fig­ure to be light and pleas­ing; and in spite of his as­sert­ing that her man­ners were not those of the fash­ion­able world, he was caught by their easy play­ful­ness. Of this she was per­fectly un­aware;—to her he was only the man who made him­self agree­able no where, and who had not thought her hand­some enough to dance with.

He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step to­wards con­vers­ing with her him­self, at­ten­ded to her con­ver­sa­tion with oth­ers. His do­ing so drew her no­tice. It was at Sir Wil­liam Lu­cas’s, where a large party were as­sembled.

“What does Mr. Darcy mean,” said she to Char­lotte, “by listen­ing to my con­ver­sa­tion with Co­l­onel For­ster?”

“That is a ques­tion which Mr. Darcy only can an­swer.”

“But if he does it any more I shall cer­tainly let him know that I see what he is about. He has a very satir­ical eye, and if I do not be­gin by be­ing im­per­tin­ent my­self, I shall soon grow afraid of him.”

On his ap­proach­ing them soon af­ter­wards, though without seem­ing to have any in­ten­tion of speak­ing, Miss Lu­cas de­fied her friend to men­tion such a sub­ject to him, which im­me­di­ately pro­vok­ing El­iza­beth to do it, she turned to him and said—

“Did not you think, Mr. Darcy, that I ex­pressed my­self un­com­monly well just now, when I was teas­ing Co­l­onel For­ster to give us a ball at Meryton?”

“With great en­ergy;—but it is a sub­ject which al­ways makes a lady en­er­getic.”

“You are severe on us.”

“It will be her turn soon to be teased,” said Miss Lu­cas. “I am go­ing to open the in­stru­ment, El­iza, and you know what fol­lows.”

“You are a very strange creature by way of a friend!—al­ways want­ing me to play and sing be­fore any­body and every­body!—If my van­ity had taken a mu­sical turn, you would have been in­valu­able, but as it is, I would really rather not sit down be­fore those who must be in the habit of hear­ing the very best per­formers.” On Miss Lu­cas’s per­sever­ing, how­ever, she ad­ded, “Very well; if it must be so, it must.” And gravely glan­cing at Mr. Darcy, “There is a fine old say­ing, which every­body here is of course fa­mil­iar with—‘Keep your breath to cool your por­ridge,’—and I shall keep mine to swell my song.”

Her per­form­ance was pleas­ing, though by no means cap­ital. After a song or two, and be­fore she could reply to the en­treat­ies of sev­eral that she would sing again, she was eagerly suc­ceeded at the in­stru­ment by her sis­ter Mary, who hav­ing, in con­sequence of be­ing the only plain one in the fam­ily, worked hard for know­ledge and ac­com­plish­ments, was al­ways im­pa­tient for dis­play.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though van­ity had given her ap­plic­a­tion, it had given her like­wise a pedantic air and con­ceited man­ner, which would have in­jured a higher de­gree of ex­cel­lence than she had reached. El­iza­beth, easy and un­af­fected, had been listened to with much more pleas­ure, though not play­ing half so well; and Mary, at the end of a long con­certo, was glad to pur­chase praise and grat­it­ude by Scotch and Irish airs, at the re­quest of her younger sis­ters, who with some of the Lu­cases and two or three of­ficers joined eagerly in dan­cing at one end of the room.

Mr. Darcy stood near them in si­lent in­dig­na­tion at such a mode of passing the even­ing, to the ex­clu­sion of all con­ver­sa­tion, and was too much en­grossed by his own thoughts to per­ceive that Sir Wil­liam Lu­cas was his neigh­bour, till Sir Wil­liam thus began.

“What a charm­ing amuse­ment for young people this is, Mr. Darcy!—There is noth­ing like dan­cing after all. I con­sider it as one of the first re­fine­ments of pol­ished so­ci­et­ies.”

“Cer­tainly, Sir;—and it has the ad­vant­age also of be­ing in vogue amongst the less pol­ished so­ci­et­ies of the world. Every sav­age can dance.”

Sir Wil­liam only smiled. “Your friend per­forms de­light­fully;” he con­tin­ued after a pause, on see­ing Bingley join the group;—“and I doubt not that you are an ad­ept in the sci­ence your­self, Mr. Darcy.”

“You saw me dance at Meryton, I be­lieve, Sir.”

“Yes, in­deed, and re­ceived no in­con­sid­er­able pleas­ure from the sight. Do you of­ten dance at St. James’s?”

“Never, sir.”

“Do you not think it would be a proper com­pli­ment to the place?”

“It is a com­pli­ment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it.”

“You have a house in town, I con­clude?”

Mr. Darcy bowed.

“I had once some thoughts of fix­ing in town my­self—for I am fond of su­per­ior so­ci­ety; but I did not feel quite cer­tain that the air of Lon­don would agree with Lady Lu­cas.”

He paused in hopes of an an­swer; but his com­pan­ion was not dis­posed to make any; and El­iza­beth at that in­stant mov­ing to­wards them, he was struck with the no­tion of do­ing a very gal­lant thing, and called out to her—

“My dear Miss El­iza, why are not you dan­cing?—Mr. Darcy, you must al­low me to present this young lady to you as a very de­sir­able part­ner. You can­not re­fuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is be­fore you.” And tak­ing her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Darcy, who, though ex­tremely sur­prised, was not un­will­ing to re­ceive it, when she in­stantly drew back, and said with some dis­com­pos­ure to Sir Wil­liam—

“Indeed, Sir, I have not the least in­ten­tion of dan­cing. I en­treat you not to sup­pose that I moved this way in or­der to beg for a part­ner.”

Mr. Darcy with grave pro­pri­ety re­ques­ted to be al­lowed the hon­our of her hand; but in vain. El­iza­beth was de­term­ined; nor did Sir Wil­liam at all shake her pur­pose by his at­tempt at per­sua­sion.

“You ex­cel so much in the dance, Miss El­iza, that it is cruel to deny me the hap­pi­ness of see­ing you; and though this gen­tle­man dis­likes the amuse­ment in gen­eral, he can have no ob­jec­tion, I am sure, to ob­lige us for one half hour.”

“Mr. Darcy is all po­lite­ness,” said El­iza­beth, smil­ing.

“He is in­deed—but con­sid­er­ing the in­duce­ment, my dear Miss El­iza, we can­not won­der at his com­plais­ance; for who would ob­ject to such a part­ner?”

El­iza­beth looked archly, and turned away. Her res­ist­ance had not in­jured her with the gen­tle­man, and he was think­ing of her with some com­pla­cency, when thus ac­cos­ted by Miss Bingley—

“I can guess the sub­ject of your rev­erie.”

“I should ima­gine not.”

“You are con­sid­er­ing how in­sup­port­able it would be to pass many even­ings in this man­ner—in such so­ci­ety; and in­deed I am quite of your opin­ion. I was never more an­noyed! The in­sip­id­ity and yet the noise; the noth­ing­ness and yet the self-im­port­ance of all these people!—What would I give to hear your stric­tures on them!”

“Your con­jec­ture is totally wrong, I as­sure you. My mind was more agree­ably en­gaged. I have been med­it­at­ing on the very great pleas­ure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty wo­man can be­stow.”

Miss Bingley im­me­di­ately fixed her eyes on his face, and de­sired he would tell her what lady had the credit of in­spir­ing such re­flec­tions. Mr. Darcy replied with great in­trep­id­ity—

“Miss El­iza­beth Ben­net.”

“Miss El­iza­beth Ben­net!” re­peated Miss Bingley. “I am all as­ton­ish­ment. How long has she been such a fa­vour­ite?—and pray when am I to wish you joy?”

“That is ex­actly the ques­tion which I ex­pec­ted you to ask. A lady’s ima­gin­a­tion is very rapid; it jumps from ad­mir­a­tion to love, from love to mat­ri­mony in a mo­ment. I knew you would be wish­ing me joy.”

“Nay, if you are so ser­i­ous about it, I shall con­sider the mat­ter as ab­so­lutely settled. You will have a charm­ing mother-in-law, in­deed, and of course she will be al­ways at Pem­ber­ley with you.”

He listened to her with per­fect in­dif­fer­ence, while she chose to en­ter­tain her­self in this man­ner, and as his com­pos­ure con­vinced her that all was safe, her wit flowed long.

VII

Mr. Ben­net’s prop­erty con­sisted al­most en­tirely in an es­tate of two thou­sand a year, which, un­for­tu­nately for his daugh­ters, was en­tailed in de­fault of heirs male, on a dis­tant re­la­tion; and their mother’s for­tune, though ample for her situ­ation in life, could but ill sup­ply the de­fi­ciency of his. Her father had been an at­tor­ney in Meryton, and had left her four thou­sand pounds.

She had a sis­ter mar­ried to a Mr. Philips, who had been a clerk to their father, and suc­ceeded him in the busi­ness, and a brother settled in Lon­don in a re­spect­able line of trade.

The vil­lage of Long­bourn was only one mile from Meryton; a most con­veni­ent dis­tance for the young ladies, who were usu­ally temp­ted thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to their aunt and to a mil­liner’s shop just over the way. The two young­est of the fam­ily, Cath­er­ine and Ly­dia, were par­tic­u­larly fre­quent in these at­ten­tions; their minds were more va­cant than their sis­ters’, and when noth­ing bet­ter offered, a walk to Meryton was ne­ces­sary to amuse their morn­ing hours and fur­nish con­ver­sa­tion for the even­ing; and how­ever bare of news the coun­try in gen­eral might be, they al­ways con­trived to learn some from their aunt. At present, in­deed, they were well sup­plied both with news and hap­pi­ness by the re­cent ar­rival of a mi­li­tia re­gi­ment in the neigh­bour­hood; it was to re­main the whole winter, and Meryton was the head quar­ters.

Their vis­its to Mrs. Philips were now pro­duct­ive of the most in­ter­est­ing in­tel­li­gence. Every day ad­ded some­thing to their know­ledge of the of­ficers’ names and con­nec­tions. Their lodgings were not long a secret, and at length they began to know the of­ficers them­selves. Mr. Philips vis­ited them all, and this opened to his nieces a source of fe­li­city un­known be­fore. They could talk of noth­ing but of­ficers; and Mr. Bingley’s large for­tune, the men­tion of which gave an­im­a­tion to their mother, was worth­less in their eyes when op­posed to the re­gi­ment­als of an en­sign.

After listen­ing one morn­ing to their ef­fu­sions on this sub­ject, Mr. Ben­net coolly ob­served—

“From all that I can col­lect by your man­ner of talk­ing, you must be two of the sil­li­est girls in the coun­try. I have sus­pec­ted it some time, but I am now con­vinced.”

Cath­er­ine was dis­con­cer­ted, and made no an­swer; but Ly­dia, with per­fect in­dif­fer­ence, con­tin­ued to ex­press her ad­mir­a­tion of Cap­tain Carter, and her hope of see­ing him in the course of the day, as he was go­ing the next morn­ing to Lon­don.

“I am as­ton­ished, my dear,” said Mrs. Ben­net, “that you should be so ready to think your own chil­dren silly. If I wished to think slight­ingly of any­body’s chil­dren, it should not be of my own how­ever.”

“If my chil­dren are silly I must hope to be al­ways sens­ible of it.”

“Yes—but as it hap­pens, they are all of them very clever.”

“This is the only point, I flat­ter my­self, on which we do not agree. I had hoped that our sen­ti­ments co­in­cided in every par­tic­u­lar, but I must so far dif­fer from you as to think our two young­est daugh­ters un­com­monly fool­ish.”

“My dear Mr. Ben­net, you must not ex­pect such girls to have the sense of their father and mother. When they get to our age I dare say they will not think about of­ficers any more than we do. I re­mem­ber the time when I liked a red coat my­self very well—and in­deed so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young col­onel, with five or six thou­sand a year, should want one of my girls, I shall not say nay to him; and I thought Co­l­onel For­ster looked very be­com­ing the other night at Sir Wil­liam’s in his re­gi­ment­als.”

“Mama,” cried Ly­dia, “my aunt says that Co­l­onel For­ster and Cap­tain Carter do not go so of­ten to Miss Wat­son’s as they did when they first came; she sees them now very of­ten stand­ing in Clarke’s lib­rary.”

Mrs. Ben­net was pre­ven­ted reply­ing by the en­trance of the foot­man with a note for Miss Ben­net; it came from Neth­er­field, and the ser­vant waited for an an­swer. Mrs. Ben­net’s eyes sparkled with pleas­ure, and she was eagerly call­ing out, while her daugh­ter read—

“Well, Jane, who is it from? what is it about? what does he say? Well, Jane, make haste and tell us; make haste, my love.”

“It is from Miss Bingley,” said Jane, and then read it aloud.

“My dear Friend,

“If you are not so com­pas­sion­ate as to dine today with Louisa and me, we shall be in danger of hat­ing each other for the rest of our lives, for a whole day’s tête-à-tête between two wo­men can never end without a quar­rel. Come as soon as you can on the re­ceipt of this. My brother and the gen­tle­men are to dine with the of­ficers. Yours ever,

“Caroline Bingley.”

“With the of­ficers!” cried Ly­dia. “I won­der my aunt did not tell us of that.”

“Din­ing out,” said Mrs. Ben­net, “that is very un­lucky.”

“Can I have the car­riage?” said Jane.

“No, my dear, you had bet­ter go on horse­back, be­cause it seems likely to rain; and then you must stay all night.”

“That would be a good scheme,” said El­iza­beth, “if you were sure that they would not of­fer to send her home.”

“Oh! but the gen­tle­men will have Mr. Bingley’s chaise to go to Meryton; and the Hursts have no horses to theirs.”

“I had much rather go in the coach.”

“But, my dear, your father can­not spare the horses, I am sure. They are wanted in the farm, Mr. Ben­net, are not they?”

“They are wanted in the farm much of­tener than I can get them.”

“But if you have got them today,” said El­iza­beth, “my mother’s pur­pose will be answered.”

She did at last ex­tort from her father an ac­know­ledg­ment that the horses were en­gaged. Jane was there­fore ob­liged to go on horse­back, and her mother at­ten­ded her to the door with many cheer­ful pro­gnostics of a bad day. Her hopes were answered; Jane had not been gone long be­fore it rained hard. Her sis­ters were un­easy for her, but her mother was de­lighted. The rain con­tin­ued the whole even­ing without in­ter­mis­sion; Jane cer­tainly could not come back.

“This was a lucky idea of mine, in­deed!” said Mrs. Ben­net, more than once, as if the credit of mak­ing it rain were all her own. Till the next morn­ing, how­ever, she was not aware of all the fe­li­city of her con­triv­ance. Break­fast was scarcely over when a ser­vant from Neth­er­field brought the fol­low­ing note for El­iza­beth:

“My dearest Lizzy,

“I find my­self very un­well this morn­ing, which, I sup­pose, is to be im­puted to my get­ting wet through yes­ter­day. My kind friends will not hear of my re­turn­ing home till I am bet­ter. They in­sist also on my see­ing Mr. Jones—there­fore do not be alarmed if you should hear of his hav­ing been to me—and ex­cept­ing a sore-throat and head­ache there is not much the mat­ter with me.

“Yours, etc.”

“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Ben­net, when El­iza­beth had read the note aloud, “if your daugh­ter should have a dan­ger­ous fit of ill­ness, if she should die, it would be a com­fort to know that it was all in pur­suit of Mr. Bingley, and un­der your or­ders.”

“Oh! I am not at all afraid of her dy­ing. People do not die of little tri­fling colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she stays there, it is all very well. I would go and see her, if I could have the car­riage.”

El­iza­beth, feel­ing really anxious, was de­term­ined to go to her, though the car­riage was not to be had; and as she was no horse­woman, walk­ing was her only al­tern­at­ive. She de­clared her res­ol­u­tion.

“How can you be so silly,” cried her mother, “as to think of such a thing, in all this dirt! You will not be fit to be seen when you get there.”

“I shall be very fit to see Jane—which is all I want.”

“Is this a hint to me, Lizzy,” said her father, “to send for the horses?”

“No, in­deed. I do not wish to avoid the walk. The dis­tance is noth­ing, when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back by din­ner.”

“I ad­mire the activ­ity of your be­ne­vol­ence,” ob­served Mary, “but every im­pulse of feel­ing should be guided by reason; and, in my opin­ion, ex­er­tion should al­ways be in pro­por­tion to what is re­quired.”

“We will go as far as Meryton with you,” said Cath­er­ine and Ly­dia. El­iza­beth ac­cep­ted their com­pany, and the three young ladies set off to­gether.

“If we make haste,” said Ly­dia, as they walked along, “per­haps we may see some­thing of Cap­tain Carter be­fore he goes.”

In Meryton they par­ted; the two young­est re­paired to the lodgings of one of the of­ficers’ wives, and El­iza­beth con­tin­ued her walk alone, cross­ing field after field at a quick pace, jump­ing over stiles and spring­ing over puddles with im­pa­tient activ­ity, and find­ing her­self at last within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty stock­ings, and a face glow­ing with the warmth of ex­er­cise.

She was shown into the break­fast-par­lour, where all but Jane were as­sembled, and where her ap­pear­ance cre­ated a great deal of sur­prise. That she should have walked three miles so early in the day, in such dirty weather, and by her­self, was al­most in­cred­ible to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and El­iza­beth was con­vinced that they held her in con­tempt for it. She was re­ceived, how­ever, very po­litely by them; and in their brother’s man­ners there was some­thing bet­ter than po­lite­ness; there was good hu­mour and kind­ness. Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr. Hurst noth­ing at all. The former was di­vided between ad­mir­a­tion of the bril­liancy which ex­er­cise had given to her com­plex­ion, and doubt as to the oc­ca­sion’s jus­ti­fy­ing her com­ing so far alone. The lat­ter was think­ing only of his break­fast.

Her en­quir­ies after her sis­ter were not very fa­vour­ably answered. Miss Ben­net had slept ill, and though up, was very fe­ver­ish and not well enough to leave her room. El­iza­beth was glad to be taken to her im­me­di­ately; and Jane, who had only been with­held by the fear of giv­ing alarm or in­con­veni­ence, from ex­press­ing in her note how much she longed for such a visit, was de­lighted at her en­trance. She was not equal, how­ever, to much con­ver­sa­tion, and when Miss Bingley left them to­gether, could at­tempt little be­side ex­pres­sions of grat­it­ude for the ex­traordin­ary kind­ness she was treated with. El­iza­beth si­lently at­ten­ded her.

When break­fast was over, they were joined by the sis­ters; and El­iza­beth began to like them her­self, when she saw how much af­fec­tion and so­li­citude they showed for Jane. The apo­thecary came, and hav­ing ex­amined his pa­tient, said, as might be sup­posed, that she had caught a vi­ol­ent cold, and that they must en­deav­our to get the bet­ter of it; ad­vised her to re­turn to bed, and prom­ised her some draughts. The ad­vice was fol­lowed read­ily, for the fe­ver­ish symp­toms in­creased, and her head ached acutely. El­iza­beth did not quit her room for a mo­ment, nor were the other ladies of­ten ab­sent; the gen­tle­men be­ing out, they had in fact noth­ing to do else­where.

When the clock struck three, El­iza­beth felt that she must go; and very un­will­ingly said so. Miss Bingley offered her the car­riage, and she only wanted a little press­ing to ac­cept it, when Jane test­i­fied such con­cern in part­ing with her, that Miss Bingley was ob­liged to con­vert the of­fer of the chaise into an in­vit­a­tion to re­main at Neth­er­field for the present. El­iza­beth most thank­fully con­sen­ted, and a ser­vant was dis­patched to Long­bourn to ac­quaint the fam­ily with her stay, and bring back a sup­ply of clothes.

VIII

At five o’clock the two ladies re­tired to dress, and at half past six El­iza­beth was summoned to din­ner. To the civil en­quir­ies which then poured in, and amongst which she had the pleas­ure of dis­tin­guish­ing the much su­per­ior so­li­citude of Mr. Bingley’s, she could not make a very fa­vour­able an­swer. Jane was by no means bet­ter. The sis­ters, on hear­ing this, re­peated three or four times how much they were grieved, how shock­ing it was to have a bad cold, and how ex­cess­ively they dis­liked be­ing ill them­selves; and then thought no more of the mat­ter: and their in­dif­fer­ence to­wards Jane when not im­me­di­ately be­fore them, re­stored El­iza­beth to the en­joy­ment of all her ori­ginal dis­like.

Their brother, in­deed, was the only one of the party whom she could re­gard with any com­pla­cency. His anxi­ety for Jane was evid­ent, and his at­ten­tions to her­self most pleas­ing, and they pre­ven­ted her feel­ing her­self so much an in­truder as she be­lieved she was con­sidered by the oth­ers. She had very little no­tice from any but him. Miss Bingley was en­grossed by Mr. Darcy, her sis­ter scarcely less so; and as for Mr. Hurst, by whom El­iza­beth sat, he was an in­dol­ent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at cards, who when he found her prefer a plain dish to a rag­out, had noth­ing to say to her.

When din­ner was over, she re­turned dir­ectly to Jane, and Miss Bingley began ab­us­ing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her man­ners were pro­nounced to be very bad in­deed, a mix­ture of pride and im­per­tin­ence; she had no con­ver­sa­tion, no style, no taste, no beauty. Mrs. Hurst thought the same, and ad­ded—

“She has noth­ing, in short, to re­com­mend her, but be­ing an ex­cel­lent walker. I shall never for­get her ap­pear­ance this morn­ing. She really looked al­most wild.”

“She did in­deed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my coun­ten­ance. Very non­sensical to come at all! Why must she be scam­per­ing about the coun­try, be­cause her sis­ter had a cold? Her hair so un­tidy, so blowsy!”

“Yes, and her pet­ti­coat; I hope you saw her pet­ti­coat, six inches deep in mud, I am ab­so­lutely cer­tain; and the gown which had been let down to hide it, not do­ing its of­fice.”

“Your pic­ture may be very ex­act, Louisa,” said Bingley; “but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss El­iza­beth Ben­net looked re­mark­ably well, when she came into the room this morn­ing. Her dirty pet­ti­coat quite es­caped my no­tice.”

“You ob­served it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am in­clined to think that you would not wish to see your sis­ter make such an ex­hib­i­tion.”

“Cer­tainly not.”

“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an ab­om­in­able sort of con­ceited in­de­pend­ence, a most coun­try town in­dif­fer­ence to de­corum.”

“It shows an af­fec­tion for her sis­ter that is very pleas­ing,” said Bingley.

“I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” ob­served Miss Bingley, in a half whis­per, “that this ad­ven­ture has rather af­fected your ad­mir­a­tion of her fine eyes.”

“Not at all,” he replied; “they were brightened by the ex­er­cise.”—A short pause fol­lowed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again.

“I have an ex­cess­ive re­gard for Jane Ben­net, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low con­nec­tions, I am afraid there is no chance of it.”

“I think I have heard you say, that their uncle is an at­tor­ney in Meryton.”

“Yes; and they have an­other, who lives some­where near Cheapside.”

“That is cap­ital,” ad­ded her sis­ter, and they both laughed heart­ily.

“If they had uncles enough to fill all Cheapside,” cried Bingley, “it would not make them one jot less agree­able.”

“But it must very ma­ter­i­ally lessen their chance of mar­ry­ing men of any con­sid­er­a­tion in the world,” replied Darcy.

To this speech Bingley made no an­swer; but his sis­ters gave it their hearty as­sent, and in­dulged their mirth for some time at the ex­pense of their dear friend’s vul­gar re­la­tions.

With a re­newal of ten­der­ness, how­ever, they re­paired to her room on leav­ing the din­ing-par­lour, and sat with her till summoned to cof­fee. She was still very poorly, and El­iza­beth would not quit her at all, till late in the even­ing, when she had the com­fort of see­ing her asleep, and when it ap­peared to her rather right than pleas­ant that she should go down­stairs her­self. On en­ter­ing the draw­ing-room she found the whole party at loo, and was im­me­di­ately in­vited to join them; but sus­pect­ing them to be play­ing high she de­clined it, and mak­ing her sis­ter the ex­cuse, said she would amuse her­self for the short time she could stay be­low with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with as­ton­ish­ment.

“Do you prefer read­ing to cards?” said he; “that is rather sin­gu­lar.”

“Miss El­iza Ben­net,” said Miss Bingley, “des­pises cards. She is a great reader and has no pleas­ure in any­thing else.”

“I de­serve neither such praise nor such cen­sure,” cried El­iza­beth; “I am not a great reader, and I have pleas­ure in many things.”

“In nurs­ing your sis­ter I am sure you have pleas­ure,” said Bingley; “and I hope it will soon be in­creased by see­ing her quite well.”

El­iza­beth thanked him from her heart, and then walked to­wards a table where a few books were ly­ing. He im­me­di­ately offered to fetch her oth­ers; all that his lib­rary af­forded.

“And I wish my col­lec­tion were lar­ger for your be­ne­fit and my own credit; but I am an idle fel­low, and though I have not many, I have more than I ever look into.”

El­iza­beth as­sured him that she could suit her­self per­fectly with those in the room.

“I am as­ton­ished,” said Miss Bingley, “that my father should have left so small a col­lec­tion of books. What a de­light­ful lib­rary you have at Pem­ber­ley, Mr. Darcy!”

“It ought to be good,” he replied, “it has been the work of many gen­er­a­tions.”

“And then you have ad­ded so much to it your­self, you are al­ways buy­ing books.”

“I can­not com­pre­hend the neg­lect of a fam­ily lib­rary in such days as these.”

“Neg­lect! I am sure you neg­lect noth­ing that can add to the beau­ties of that noble place. Charles, when you build your house, I wish it may be half as de­light­ful as Pem­ber­ley.”

“I wish it may.”

“But I would really ad­vise you to make your pur­chase in that neigh­bour­hood, and take Pem­ber­ley for a kind of model. There is not a finer county in Eng­land than Derby­shire.”

“With all my heart; I will buy Pem­ber­ley it­self if Darcy will sell it.”

“I am talk­ing of pos­sib­il­it­ies, Charles.”

“Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more pos­sible to get Pem­ber­ley by pur­chase than by im­it­a­tion.”

El­iza­beth was so much caught by what passed, as to leave her very little at­ten­tion for her book; and soon lay­ing it wholly aside, she drew near the card-table, and sta­tioned her­self between Mr. Bingley and his eld­est sis­ter, to ob­serve the game.

“Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring?” said Miss Bingley; “will she be as tall as I am?”

“I think she will. She is now about Miss El­iza­beth Ben­net’s height, or rather taller.”

“How I long to see her again! I never met with any­body who de­lighted me so much. Such a coun­ten­ance, such man­ners! and so ex­tremely ac­com­plished for her age! Her per­form­ance on the pi­ano­forte is ex­quis­ite.”

“It is amaz­ing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies can have pa­tience to be so very ac­com­plished, as they all are.”

“All young ladies ac­com­plished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?”

“Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens and net purses. I scarcely know any­one who can­not do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without be­ing in­formed that she was very ac­com­plished.”

“Your list of the com­mon ex­tent of ac­com­plish­ments,” said Darcy, “has too much truth. The word is ap­plied to many a wo­man who de­serves it no oth­er­wise than by net­ting a purse, or cov­er­ing a screen. But I am very far from agree­ing with you in your es­tim­a­tion of ladies in gen­eral. I can­not boast of know­ing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my ac­quaint­ance, that are really ac­com­plished.”

“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.

“Then,” ob­served El­iza­beth, “you must com­pre­hend a great deal in your idea of an ac­com­plished wo­man.”

“Yes; I do com­pre­hend a great deal in it.”

“Oh! cer­tainly,” cried his faith­ful as­sist­ant, “no one can be really es­teemed ac­com­plished, who does not greatly sur­pass what is usu­ally met with. A wo­man must have a thor­ough know­ledge of mu­sic, singing, draw­ing, dan­cing, and the mod­ern lan­guages, to de­serve the word; and be­sides all this, she must pos­sess a cer­tain some­thing in her air and man­ner of walk­ing, the tone of her voice, her ad­dress and ex­pres­sions, or the word will be but half de­served.”

“All this she must pos­sess,” ad­ded Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add some­thing more sub­stan­tial, in the im­prove­ment of her mind by ex­tens­ive read­ing.”

“I am no longer sur­prised at your know­ing only six ac­com­plished wo­men. I rather won­der now at your know­ing any.”

“Are you so severe upon your own sex, as to doubt the pos­sib­il­ity of all this?”

“I never saw such a wo­man. I never saw such ca­pa­city, and taste, and ap­plic­a­tion, and el­eg­ance, as you de­scribe, united.”

Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the in­justice of her im­plied doubt, and were both protest­ing that they knew many wo­men who answered this de­scrip­tion, when Mr. Hurst called them to or­der, with bit­ter com­plaints of their in­at­ten­tion to what was go­ing for­ward. As all con­ver­sa­tion was thereby at an end, El­iza­beth soon af­ter­wards left the room.

“El­iza Ben­net,” said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her, “is one of those young ladies who seek to re­com­mend them­selves to the other sex, by un­der­valu­ing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it suc­ceeds. But, in my opin­ion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.”

“Undoubtedly,” replied Darcy, to whom this re­mark was chiefly ad­dressed, “there is mean­ness in all the arts which ladies some­times con­des­cend to em­ploy for cap­tiv­a­tion. Whatever bears af­fin­ity to cun­ning is despic­able.”

Miss Bingley was not so en­tirely sat­is­fied with this reply as to con­tinue the sub­ject.

El­iza­beth joined them again only to say that her sis­ter was worse, and that she could not leave her. Bingley urged Mr. Jones’s be­ing sent for im­me­di­ately; while his sis­ters, con­vinced that no coun­try ad­vice could be of any ser­vice, re­com­men­ded an ex­press to town for one of the most em­in­ent phys­i­cians. This, she would not hear of; but she was not so un­will­ing to com­ply with their brother’s pro­posal; and it was settled that Mr. Jones should be sent for early in the morn­ing, if Miss Ben­net were not de­cidedly bet­ter. Bingley was quite un­com­fort­able; his sis­ters de­clared that they were miser­able. They solaced their wretched­ness, how­ever, by duets after sup­per, while he could find no bet­ter re­lief to his feel­ings than by giv­ing his house­keeper dir­ec­tions that every pos­sible at­ten­tion might be paid to the sick lady and her sis­ter.

IX

El­iza­beth passed the chief of the night in her sis­ter’s room, and in the morn­ing had the pleas­ure of be­ing able to send a tol­er­able an­swer to the en­quir­ies which she very early re­ceived from Mr. Bingley by a house­maid, and some time af­ter­wards from the two el­eg­ant ladies who waited on his sis­ters. In spite of this amend­ment, how­ever, she re­ques­ted to have a note sent to Long­bourn, de­sir­ing her mother to visit Jane, and form her own judg­ment of her situ­ation. The note was im­me­di­ately dis­patched, and its con­tents as quickly com­plied with. Mrs. Ben­net, ac­com­pan­ied by her two young­est girls, reached Neth­er­field soon after the fam­ily break­fast.

Had she found Jane in any ap­par­ent danger, Mrs. Ben­net would have been very miser­able; but be­ing sat­is­fied on see­ing her that her ill­ness was not alarm­ing, she had no wish of her re­cov­er­ing im­me­di­ately, as her res­tor­a­tion to health would prob­ably re­move her from Neth­er­field. She would not listen there­fore to her daugh­ter’s pro­posal of be­ing car­ried home; neither did the apo­thecary, who ar­rived about the same time, think it at all ad­vis­able. After sit­ting a little while with Jane, on Miss Bingley’s ap­pear­ance and in­vit­a­tion, the mother and three daugh­ters all at­ten­ded her into the break­fast par­lour. Bingley met them with hopes that Mrs. Ben­net had not found Miss Ben­net worse than she ex­pec­ted.

“Indeed I have, Sir,” was her an­swer. “She is a great deal too ill to be moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of mov­ing her. We must tres­pass a little longer on your kind­ness.”

“Re­moved!” cried Bingley. “It must not be thought of. My sis­ter, I am sure, will not hear of her re­moval.”

“You may de­pend upon it, Madam,” said Miss Bingley, with cold ci­vil­ity, “that Miss Ben­net shall re­ceive every pos­sible at­ten­tion while she re­mains with us.”

Mrs. Ben­net was pro­fuse in her ac­know­ledg­ments.

“I am sure,” she ad­ded, “if it was not for such good friends I do not know what would be­come of her, for she is very ill in­deed, and suf­fers a vast deal, though with the greatest pa­tience in the world, which is al­ways the way with her, for she has, without ex­cep­tion, the sweetest tem­per I ever met with. I of­ten tell my other girls they are noth­ing to her. You have a sweet room here, Mr. Bingley, and a charm­ing pro­spect over that gravel walk. I do not know a place in the coun­try that is equal to Neth­er­field. You will not think of quit­ting it in a hurry I hope, though you have but a short lease.”

“Whatever I do is done in a hurry,” replied he; “and there­fore if I should re­solve to quit Neth­er­field, I should prob­ably be off in five minutes. At present, how­ever, I con­sider my­self as quite fixed here.”

“That is ex­actly what I should have sup­posed of you,” said El­iza­beth.

“You be­gin to com­pre­hend me, do you?” cried he, turn­ing to­wards her.

“Oh! yes—I un­der­stand you per­fectly.”

“I wish I might take this for a com­pli­ment; but to be so eas­ily seen through I am afraid is pi­ti­ful.”

“That is as it hap­pens. It does not ne­ces­sar­ily fol­low that a deep, in­tric­ate char­ac­ter is more or less es­tim­able than such a one as yours.”

“Lizzy,” cried her mother, “re­mem­ber where you are, and do not run on in the wild man­ner that you are suffered to do at home.”

“I did not know be­fore,” con­tin­ued Bingley im­me­di­ately, “that you were a stud­ier of char­ac­ter. It must be an amus­ing study.”

“Yes; but in­tric­ate char­ac­ters are the most amus­ing. They have at least that ad­vant­age.”

“The coun­try,” said Darcy, “can in gen­eral sup­ply but few sub­jects for such a study. In a coun­try neigh­bour­hood you move in a very con­fined and un­vary­ing so­ci­ety.”

“But people them­selves al­ter so much, that there is some­thing new to be ob­served in them forever.”

“Yes, in­deed,” cried Mrs. Ben­net, of­fen­ded by his man­ner of men­tion­ing a coun­try neigh­bour­hood. “I as­sure you there is quite as much of that go­ing on in the coun­try as in town.”

Every­body was sur­prised; and Darcy, after look­ing at her for a mo­ment, turned si­lently away. Mrs. Ben­net, who fan­cied she had gained a com­plete vic­tory over him, con­tin­ued her tri­umph.

“I can­not see that Lon­don has any great ad­vant­age over the coun­try for my part, ex­cept the shops and pub­lic places. The coun­try is a vast deal pleas­anter, is not it, Mr. Bingley?”

“When I am in the coun­try,” he replied, “I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their ad­vant­ages, and I can be equally happy in either.”

“Aye—that is be­cause you have the right dis­pos­i­tion. But that gen­tle­man,” look­ing at Darcy, “seemed to think the coun­try was noth­ing at all.”

“Indeed, Mama, you are mis­taken,” said El­iza­beth, blush­ing for her mother. “You quite mis­took Mr. Darcy. He only meant that there were not such a vari­ety of people to be met with in the coun­try as in town, which you must ac­know­ledge to be true.”

“Cer­tainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meet­ing with many people in this neigh­bour­hood, I be­lieve there are few neigh­bour­hoods lar­ger. I know we dine with four and twenty fam­il­ies.”

Noth­ing but con­cern for El­iza­beth could en­able Bingley to keep his coun­ten­ance. His sis­ter was less del­ic­ate, and dir­ec­ted her eye to­wards Mr. Darcy with a very ex­press­ive smile. El­iza­beth, for the sake of say­ing some­thing that might turn her mother’s thoughts, now asked her if Char­lotte Lu­cas had been at Long­bourn since her com­ing away.

“Yes, she called yes­ter­day with her father. What an agree­able man Sir Wil­liam is, Mr. Bingley—is not he? so much the man of fash­ion! so gen­teel and so easy!—He has al­ways some­thing to say to every­body. That is my idea of good breed­ing; and those per­sons who fancy them­selves very im­port­ant and never open their mouths, quite mis­take the mat­ter.”

“Did Char­lotte dine with you?”

“No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the mince pies. For my part, Mr. Bingley, I al­ways keep ser­vants that can do their own work; my daugh­ters are brought up dif­fer­ently. But every­body is to judge for them­selves, and the Lu­cases are very good sort of girls, I as­sure you. It is a pity they are not hand­some! Not that I think Char­lotte so very plain—but then she is our par­tic­u­lar friend.”

“She seems a very pleas­ant young wo­man,” said Bingley.

“Oh! dear, yes;—but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lu­cas her­self has of­ten said so, and en­vied me Jane’s beauty. I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane—one does not of­ten see any­body bet­ter look­ing. It is what every­body says. I do not trust my own par­ti­al­ity. When she was only fif­teen, there was a gen­tle­man at my brother Gardiner’s in town, so much in love with her, that my sis­ter-in-law was sure he would make her an of­fer be­fore we came away. But how­ever he did not. Per­haps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.”

“And so ended his af­fec­tion,” said El­iza­beth im­pa­tiently. “There has been many a one, I fancy, over­come in the same way. I won­der who first dis­covered the ef­fic­acy of po­etry in driv­ing away love!”

“I have been used to con­sider po­etry as the food of love,” said Darcy.

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nour­ishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of in­clin­a­tion, I am con­vinced that one good son­net will starve it en­tirely away.”

Darcy only smiled; and the gen­eral pause which en­sued made El­iza­beth tremble lest her mother should be ex­pos­ing her­self again. She longed to speak, but could think of noth­ing to say; and after a short si­lence Mrs. Ben­net began re­peat­ing her thanks to Mr. Bingley for his kind­ness to Jane, with an apo­logy for troub­ling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Bingley was un­af­fectedly civil in his an­swer, and forced his younger sis­ter to be civil also, and say what the oc­ca­sion re­quired. She per­formed her part in­deed without much gra­cious­ness, but Mrs. Ben­net was sat­is­fied, and soon af­ter­wards ordered her car­riage. Upon this sig­nal, the young­est of her daugh­ters put her­self for­ward. The two girls had been whis­per­ing to each other dur­ing the whole visit, and the res­ult of it was, that the young­est should tax Mr. Bingley with hav­ing prom­ised on his first com­ing into the coun­try to give a ball at Neth­er­field.

Ly­dia was a stout, well-grown girl of fif­teen, with a fine com­plex­ion and good-hu­moured coun­ten­ance; a fa­vour­ite with her mother, whose af­fec­tion had brought her into pub­lic at an early age. She had high an­imal spir­its, and a sort of nat­ural self-con­sequence, which the at­ten­tions of the of­ficers, to whom her uncle’s good din­ners and her own easy man­ners re­com­men­ded her, had in­creased into as­sur­ance. She was very equal there­fore to ad­dress Mr. Bingley on the sub­ject of the ball, and ab­ruptly re­minded him of his prom­ise; adding, that it would be the most shame­ful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His an­swer to this sud­den at­tack was de­light­ful to their mother’s ear.

“I am per­fectly ready, I as­sure you, to keep my en­gage­ment; and when your sis­ter is re­covered, you shall if you please name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dan­cing while she is ill.”

Ly­dia de­clared her­self sat­is­fied. “Oh! yes—it would be much bet­ter to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely Cap­tain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have given your ball,” she ad­ded, “I shall in­sist on their giv­ing one also. I shall tell Co­l­onel For­ster it will be quite a shame if he does not.”

Mrs. Ben­net and her daugh­ters then de­par­ted, and El­iza­beth re­turned in­stantly to Jane, leav­ing her own and her re­la­tions’ be­ha­viour to the re­marks of the two ladies and Mr. Darcy; the lat­ter of whom, how­ever, could not be pre­vailed on to join in their cen­sure of her, in spite of all Miss Bingley’s wit­ti­cisms on fine eyes.