Now, if we turn to the first three editions, we find the passage broken up as follows:—
'You are very cruel,' said her sister, 'you will not let me smile, and are provoking me to it every moment.'
'How hard it is in some cases to be believed! And how impossible in others!'
'But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I acknowledge?'
'That is a question which I hardly know how to answer.'
This is the only passage which we can correct on the authority of the author herself. In a letter dated February 4, 1813, she says, referring to the first edition of Pride and Prejudice: 'The greatest blunder in printing is in p. 220, l. 3, where two sentences are made into one.' Unfortunately, in trying to correct the mistake, Bentley's edition fell into another, and Mr. Johnson was the first to break up the sentences correctly. The passage should of course run:—
'You are very cruel,' said her sister, 'you will not let me smile, and are provoking me to it every moment.'
'How hard it is in some cases to be believed!'
'And how impossible in others!'
'But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I acknowledge?'