“There is a gentleman with him, mamma,” says the unconscious Kitty, and then adds the next moment, “La! it looks just like that man who used to be with him before, Mr. What’s-his-name? That tall, proud man.”
“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy; and so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of Mr. Bingley will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”
These are some of the many expressions of dislike to Darcy and misconception of his character, for which Elizabeth has partly herself to thank, since she had helped largely to originate them. She has now to listen to them in silence, while she alone is aware of the benefits he has conferred on the whole family, and that he has saved her mother’s favourite daughter from destruction.
Elizabeth had meant to watch closely Jane’s first interview with Bingley on his return; but the attention of the young watcher is sadly distracted by her own position and that of Darcy, while she has nearly as many doubts of Darcy’s intentions as of Bingley’s. Darcy’s coming there at all might have been supposed to have only one significance, but Elizabeth will not be sure.
As it happens, the double awkwardness of the situation is so great that all those most concerned in it labour under the greatest constraint—a constraint which, unhappily, is only too likely to be misconstrued.
Jane is pale and sedate.
Bingley is looking embarrassed as well as pleased.
Darcy strikes Elizabeth as more like what he used to be in Hertfordshire than as he had seemed in the pleasant days in Derbyshire.
Of Elizabeth’s own unwonted gravity, naturally she can have no just conception.
Matters are made worse by Mrs. Bennet, whose fulsome civility to Bingley, on the one hand, contrasted as it is with her cold politeness to Darcy, on the other, fill both her elder daughters with distress and mortification; though it is only Elizabeth who suffers agonies of shame from Mrs. Bennet’s most mal à propos dwelling on her youngest daughter’s marriage, and her hit at Darcy when she reflects, in reference to Wickham, “Thank Heaven! he has some friends, though, perhaps, not so many as he deserves.”