Austen Said:

his visit to Rosings was to end on the day after the next

in less than a fortnight she should herself be with Jane again, , and enabled to contribute to the recovery of her spirits, by all that affection could do.

Colonel Fitzwilliam had made it clear that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable as he was, she did not mean to be unhappy about him.

he had no doubt of a favourable answer.

He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security.

“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot — I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.”

“I might as well inquire,”

“why with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you — had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”

“I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other — of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.”

“Can you deny that you have done it?”

“But it is not merely this affair,”

“on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?”

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?”

“And of your infliction,”

“You have reduced him to his present state of poverty — comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule.”

“You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”

“From the very beginning — from the first moment, I may almost say — of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

That she should receive an offer of marriage from Mr. Darcy! That he should have been in love with her for so many months! So much in love as to wish to marry her in spite of all the objections which had made him prevent his friend's marrying her sister, and which must appear at least with equal force in his own case — was almost incredible! It was gratifying to have inspired unconsciously so strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable pride — his shameless avowal of what he had done with respect to Jane — his unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, though he could not justify it, and the unfeeling manner in which he had mentioned Mr. Wickham, his cruelty towards whom he had not attempted to deny,

soon after breakfast, to indulge herself in air and exercise.

he believed any apology to be in his power;

he could have no explanation to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal.

“This must be false! This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!”

she would not regard it,

would never look in it again.

The account of his connection with the Pemberley family was exactly what he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy,

agreed equally well with his own words. So far each recital confirmed the other;

there was gross duplicity on one side or the other;

her wishes did not err.

On both sides it was only assertion.

less than infamous,

The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay at Mr. Wickham's charge,

She had never heard of him before his entrance into the ——shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man who, on meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real character, had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of inquiring.

His countenance, voice, and manner had established him at once in the possession of every virtue.

Mr. Darcy would never have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his cousin's corroboration.

the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before.

he had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr. Darcy — that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that he should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball the very next week.

till the Netherfield family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but herself; but that after their removal it had been everywhere discussed; that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy's character, though he had assured her that respect for the father would always prevent his exposing the son.

his eagerness to grasp at anything. His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his vanity by encouraging the preference which

she had most incautiously shown.

Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance — an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways — seen any thing that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust — anything that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was esteemed and valued — that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling; that had his actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.

“How despicably I have acted!”

“I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”

Mr. Darcy's explanation there, had appeared very insufficient,

How could she deny that credit to his assertions in one instance, which she had been obliged to give in the other?

He declared himself to be totally unsuspicious of her sister's attachment;

Jane's feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and

there was a constant complacency in her air and manner not often united with great sensibility.

Jane's disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest relations,

how materially the credit of both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct,

had she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to her as her future niece;