第78章[第3页/共5页]

After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought―re-considering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.

How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned!His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and hatefully mercenary;and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but 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 believed she had most incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not but allow that 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 anything 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.