第123章

    “I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,”said Jane to her sister.“It would be nothing;I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;but she does not know,no one can know,how much I suffer from what she says.Happy shall I be,when his stay at Netherfield is over!”

    “I wish I could say anything to comfort you,”replied Elizabeth;“but it is wholly out of my power.You must feel it;and the usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have always so much.”

    Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could.She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire,she saw him, from her dressing-room window,enter the paddock and ride towards the house.

    Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely kept her place at the table;but Elizabeth,to satisfy her mother,went to the window—she looked,—she saw Mr.Darcy with him,and sat down again by her sister.

    “There is a gentleman with him,mamma,”said Kitty;“who can it be?”

    “Some acquaintance or other,my dear,I suppose;I am sure I do not know.”

    “La!”replied Kitty,“it looks just like that man that 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's will always be welcome here, to be sure;but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”

    Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern.She knew but little of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable enough.Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be civil to him only as Mr. Bingley's friend, without being heard by either of them.But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew Mrs. Gardiner's le... -->>
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