“Were you absolutely selfish when you married Mr. Darcy?” asks Lavinia, carrying the war into the enemy’s quarters, and with an apposite recalling of all the sacrifices that her friend—once a very smart London girl—is rumoured by the neighbourhood to have been called upon to make by her choice.
“Absolutely,” replies Susan, with the stoutness of the most unmistakable truth. “Everybody belonging to me cried, and said they could not see what I saw in Richard; but I saw what I saw in him, and I knew that that was all that mattered.”
“Perhaps I see what I see in Rupert,” replies Lavinia, plucking up her spirit, and detecting a joint in her companion’s harness, though her own voice is not assured.
“If you do, of course it is all right,” rejoins the other, unelastically.
Lavinia’s head would like to droop, so oppressive is the sense of the cold doubt infiltrated into her own acquiescent serenity; but she forces it to hold itself up against its will.
“He is quite aware that we have your disapproval,” she says with a dignity that is native to her; “so much so that he advised me to tell you it was ‘bound to come.’”
Mrs. Darcy looks at her sadly; but without either apology or contradiction.
“That is just what I do not feel.”
“You have always done him scant justice!” cries the girl, stung into hotter partisanship by the chill whisper of a traitor within her own camp. “After all, it is I, not you, that am to marry him.”
“Yes, it is you;” in downcast assent.