Austen Said:

“You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?”

“What you ask,”

“is no sacrifice on my side; and Mr. Darcy had much better finish his letter.”

“Oh!”

“I heard you before, but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say ‘Yes,’ that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore, made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all — and now despise me if you dare.”

“I hope,”

“you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after the officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses.”

“Oh! yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Philips be placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great-uncle the judge. They are in the same profession, you know, only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth's picture, you must not have it taken, for what painter could do justice to those beautiful eyes?”

“I did not know that you intended to walk,”

“No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good-bye.”

no one intended to play,

“How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

“By the bye, Charles, are you really serious in meditating a dance at Netherfield? I would advise you, before you determine on it, to consult the wishes of the present party; I am much mistaken if there are not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a punishment than a pleasure.”

“I should like balls infinitely better,”

“if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day.”

“Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.”

“What could he mean?

what could be his meaning”

she could at all understand him?

“Not at all,”

“but depend upon it, he means to be severe on us, and our surest way of disappointing him, will be to ask nothing about it.”

“Oh! shocking!”

“I never heard anything so abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?”

“Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination,”

“We can all plague and punish one another. Tease him — laugh at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be done.”

“But upon my honour, I do not. I do assure you that my intimacy has not yet taught me that. Tease calmness of manner and presence of mind! No, no — I feel he may defy us there. And as to laughter, we will not expose ourselves, if you please, by attempting to laugh without a subject. Mr. Darcy may hug himself.”

“Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!”

“That is an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would be a great loss to me to have many such acquaintances. I dearly love a laugh.”

“Certainly,”

“there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise and good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can. But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without.”

“Such as vanity and pride.”

“Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume,”

“and pray what is the result?”

“I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise.”

“That is a failing indeed!”

“Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”

“And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”

“Do let us have a little music,”

“Louisa, you will not mind my waking Mr. Hurst?”

the carriage might be sent for them in the course of the day.

“Though it is difficult,”

“to guess in what way he can mean to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is certainly to his credit.”

“He must be an oddity, I think,”

“I cannot make him out. — There is something very pompous in his style. — And what can he mean by apologising for being next in the entail? — We cannot suppose he would help it if he could. — Could he be a sensible man, sir?”

“In point of composition,”

“the letter does not seem defective. The idea of the olive-branch perhaps is not wholly new, yet I think it is well expressed.”

What could be the meaning of it?

she had neither been seeing him before, nor thinking of him since, with the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration.

the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.

“About a month,”