第78章[第1页/共5页]

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.

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.