“And this,” he cries, as he walks with quick steps across the room, “is your opinion of me? This is the estimation in which you hold me? I thank you for explaining it so freely. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed.”
But he is not so much hurt that pride and resentment are not to have the last word. He stops his indignant cry, to assert that perhaps his offences might have been overlooked if he had not wounded her pride by the honest confession of his scruples. Her bitter accusations might have been suppressed if he had flattered her with the belief that he was impelled by unqualified inclination. But he is not ashamed of the feelings he has related. They were natural and just. Could she expect him to rejoice in the inferiority of her connexions?
Here is the most masterful of incensed lovers. But he meets his match in the most resolute of indignant girls.
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth says, with all the calmness she can summon to her aid, “if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt, in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”
She sees him start at this terrible home-thrust, and she is not inclined to be magnanimous in pursuing her advantage. “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it,” she adds. Surely this is enough. But the obvious astonishment with which he hears her, the expression of mingled incredulity and mortification with which he looks at her, spurs on the intrepid, wrathful girl to explain further that from the very beginning—from the first moment of their acquaintance almost—his manners have impressed her with the fullest belief in his arrogance and conceit. She speaks out the disapprobation which has ended in invincible dislike, and winds up with the somewhat gratuitous statement that she had not known him a month before she felt that he was the last man in the world whom she could ever be prevailed on to marry.
Rash, foolish—if perfectly sincere—words can go no further.
“You have said quite enough, madam,” Darcy puts an end to the altercation. “I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”
So the stormy interview terminates, and Elizabeth is left to recover from the tumult of her feelings, though it is too soon for her to be sorry for having spoken so many vehement words in her anger.
Of course, Elizabeth keeps an honourable silence on what has befallen her. She has no confidante save her own thoughts, and she is reduced next morning to walking out alone to indulge them in peace, when again she sees a gentleman in the distance. This time she retreats from him, but she hears Mr. Darcy’s voice repeat her name. She has no choice save to stop and face him.
He comes up, holds out a letter, and saying quietly and haughtily, “Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?” bows himself off.