“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!”
Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy, was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill applied.
“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.”
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.
The colour which had been driven from her face,returned for half a minute with an additional glow,and a smile of delight added lustre to her eyes,as she thought for that space of time that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken.But she would not be secure.