第78章[第1页/共5页]

“How despicably I have acted!”she cried;“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.”

From herself to Jane―from Jane to Bingley,her thoughts were in a line which soon brought to her recollection that Mr.Darcy's explanation there had appeared very insufficient,and she read it again.Widely different was the effect of a second perusal.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;and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's opinion had always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his deion of Jane.She felt that Jane's feelings,though fervent,were little displayed,and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner not often united with great sensibility.