“There can be no doubt of that,” asserts the bride-elect, briskly. “It is settled between us already that we are to be the happiest couple in the world!”
Elizabeth has still to hear the ungracious epithets she herself had first applied bestowed liberally on her lover. So successful had she been in diffusing her ideas, that the faith in them—together with Darcy’s reserve—prevents even Mrs. Bennet, whose head is as full of lovers and future husbands as the feather-head of any extremely silly girl of sixteen, from viewing him in that light. “Good gracious!” she cries, as she stands at a window next morning, “if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming here again with our dear Bingley. What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but that he would go a-shooting, or something or other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him? Lizzy, you must walk out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley’s way.”
Elizabeth cannot help laughing at so convenient an arrangement; still she smarts at the prolonged echo of her own idle words.
It is still worse when Darcy has asked Mr. Bennet for Elizabeth’s hand, on the understanding that she herself has accepted him, and Elizabeth is bidden go to her father.
Mr. Bennet is walking up and down the library, looking grave and anxious. “Lizzy,” he says, “what are you doing? Are you out of your senses to be accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?”
How she wishes her former opinions had been more reasonable, her expressions more moderate, that her pride and modesty might have been spared unsaying her own declarations on the one hand, and on the other making professions which are generally taken for granted. In some confusion she assures her father of her regard for Mr. Darcy.
“Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich, to be sure, and you may have finer clothes and finer carriages than Jane. But will they make you happy?”
“Have you any other objection than your belief in my indifference?” Elizabeth finds voice to say.
“None at all,” her father admits. “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man, but that would be nothing if you really liked him.”
“I do, I do like him, I love him,” protests poor Elizabeth, with unwonted tears in her bright eyes, partly called forth by the trial of having to make such an awkward confession, partly provoked by the aspersions cast on Darcy, for which she was to blame in the first instance. “Indeed, he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in such terms.”