William Price assented, and said that Miss Bennet had so much freshness and enthusiasm, she could enjoy many things, and enter keenly into them all.
Georgiana fully endorsed this, but thought that Kitty had had a particularly delightful visit to town this year and really regretted leaving.
William Price said that Miss Bennet's friends were very sorry to lose her.
"This is all very well," thought Georgiana, "but we do not get any farther. Am I shy of him, or is he shy of me? Oh, I wonder what Kitty would like me to say? If I were Mrs. Knightley I could probably bring in the inconstancy of sailors with good effect. I suppose she thinks that I mean to throw a doubt on Mr. Price; how unlucky that it should have had that appearance!"
She was assisted in her meditations by Mr. Price's remarking that he had never been in Derbyshire, and imagined it to be a beautiful county, and this afforded her the opportunity of descanting on the loveliness of its scenery and the particular attractions of the country round Desborough Park. She added that she hoped there would be nothing to prevent him from seeing it for himself that autumn, and he replied warmly, agreeing and saying that if he were still his own master at that time nothing should prevent it. A question or two about Pemberley followed, and the relative positions of the two houses; he had heard of it as being a show place from his sister, Mrs. Bertram, who had made a tour through the midland counties to visit all the cathedrals and old churches, but, he declared, had actually been so worldly as to look at one or two of the grand mansions as well. Georgiana questioned its worldliness, and was told that his brother and sister were the dearest people, but dreadfully good; they thought everything wrong.
This description, of which Georgiana would have liked to have heard more, was interrupted by a song, and at its conclusion Mr. Price was waiting with the inquiry: "Do you return to Pemberley soon, Miss Darcy?"
"In about a month, I think; but I leave town in a fortnight's time to stay with my aunt at Hunsford."
"I am leaving London almost immediately, I am sorry to say," said William Price. "I have to go down to Portsmouth, where my mother is changing houses, and as she has that and a quantity of lawyers' business on her hands, since my father died, she wishes me to help her."
Georgiana could not but approve of this decision, but she thought it partly accounted for the young man's being in far less good spirits this evening than on the previous occasion; he evidently did not like to quit London. She was endeavouring to think of a way of conveying to him that she would see Kitty almost as soon as she reached home, when the opening of a solo on the harp caused her to forget everything but the sound of the instrument, in which she had always taken extreme delight. Mr. Price, too, listened with close attention, and when it was over, and they were commending the performance, he exclaimed: "The harp always reminds me of one of the most charming women I ever knew, who used to play it—still does, I daresay, at all events it is associated inseparably with her."
Curiosity as well as politeness impelled Georgiana to ask for more particulars, for she privately wished very much to know what her companion's idea of a charming woman might be, and he answered readily enough: "She was a lady I first met some years ago at Mansfield before my sister's marriage; she was a friend of the whole Bertram family, and, in a way, of my sister's also; but circumstances divided them, Miss Crawford's people left the neighbourhood, and now I only see her occasionally in town."