Page 22 of Hard Home

"You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favor of its propriety."

"To yield readily — easily — to thepersuasionof a friend is no merit with you."

"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either."

"You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waitingfor arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs, before we discuss the discretion of his behavior thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?"

"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of intimacy subsisting between the parties?"

"By all means," cried Bingley; "let us hear all the particulars, not forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will have more weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be aware of. I assure you that if Darcy were not such a great tall fellow, in comparison with myself, I should not pay him half so much deference."

Everybody laughed except two people.

Elizabeth did not laugh because she had begun, without at all meaning to, to attend; and it had occurred to her that Mr. Bingley had made a joke of a true thing, in the way that men do when the true thing has been sitting on them a long while, and thatheightwas the politest possible word for it.

Mr. Darcy did not laugh because he had noticed exactly the same thing, at exactly the same moment, and had further noticed that Elizabeth had noticed it; and he looked up from his letter and found her looking at him, and felt the dry attentive pressure of it go over him and stop.

He said, "Bingley is at liberty to disregard me in all things and knows it."

"Yes," said Elizabeth. "That is what I should say, in your place, if I wished it to remain true."

---

After a short silence, Mrs. Hurst begged Miss Bingley to play; and Miss Bingley, after some little entreaty, complied.

She played well. Her line was young, and had no music in it, and what she had was a fine instrument and a French master and eleven years of unhappy diligence; and it went off very creditably, and Mrs. Hurst turned the pages, and the room talked over it, as the room had talked over Mary.

Some Italian songs succeeded, and then a lively Scotch air; and Mr. Darcy, drawing near Elizabeth, said to her —

"Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?"

She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with some surprise at her silence.

"Oh!" said she, "I heard you before; but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have therefore made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all — and now despise me if you dare."

"Indeed I do not dare."

Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry.

She was also — and this she did not examine, then or for a long while — very glad that she had said no; because the room was small, and the ward on the door of it was a hundred and forty years old and had been laid by somebody's steward, and she had felt what happened at Lucas Lodge when Sir William, meaning nothing in the world by it, had put her hand out toward that man's.

There were two dances at a country ball. Six meetings of the hands in the figure. Gloved.

She thought that she would rather not, at present, find out.

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Miss Bingley saw, or suspected, enough to be jealous; and her great anxiety for the recovery of her dear friend Jane received some assistance from her desire of getting rid of Elizabeth.

She often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest, by talking of their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in such an alliance.

"I hope," said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery the next day, "you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after the officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavor to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses."

"Have you any thing else to propose for my domestic felicity?"

"Oh! yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Philips be placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great uncle the judge. They are in the same profession, you know; only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth's picture, you must not attempt to have it taken, for what painter could do justice to those beautiful eyes?"

"It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their color and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine, might be copied."