Page 36 of Hard Home

She was quite well now. She had slept properly for six nights, and eaten, and taken the air, and she came into the room and the room settled the way a bird settles, and everybody in it was a little easier and nobody said so; and she sat down opposite him and was serene, and glad to see him, and perfectly kind, and exactly as glad and kind as she was to his sister Louisa.

He talked to her for half an hour, and enjoyed it more than anything that had happened to him in a fortnight, and went away obscurely troubled, and could not have said what about.

Mr. Darcy was not with them. Miss Bingley, asked after him by Mrs. Bennet with great civility, said that he was engaged.

"Engaged!" said Mrs. Bennet. "At Netherfield? In November?"

"He is engaged in the ballroom," said Miss Bingley, "and has been these two days, and has desired that nobody should go into it, and Charles has given orders accordingly, and I am sure I have no notion what he is about and have long since given over enquiring."

"He is doing something to the room," said Bingley cheerfully. "For the ward, you know. He would not let it alone."

"How very odd," said Mrs. Bennet.

"Is it?" said Bingley. "I dare say it is. He is generally right about that sort of thing, and I have found it saves a great deal of trouble to let him get on."

Elizabeth, who had been about to say something perfectly polite, found that she had not said it, and sat with the words in her mouth for some seconds while the conversation went past her.

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Elizabeth's spirits were so high on the occasion, that though she did not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not help asking him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's invitation, and if he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to dance.

"I am by no means of opinion, I assure you," said he, "that a ball of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people, can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing myself, that I shall hope to be honored with the hands of all my fair cousins in the course of the evening;and I take this opportunity of soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially."

Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully proposed being engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances: — and to have Mr. Collins instead! her liveliness had never been worse timed. There was no help for it however. Mr. Wickham's happiness and her own was per force delayed a little longer, and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as good a grace as she could.

She was not the better pleased with his gallantry, from the idea it suggested of something more. It now first struck her, thatshewas selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors. The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than gratified herself, by this effect of her charms, it was not long before her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage was exceedingly agreeable toher.

Elizabeth however did not choose to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the consequence of any reply.

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Mary followed her upstairs.

She did it in her usual way, which was to arrive in a doorway and stand in it until she was noticed, and Elizabeth, who was in a very good humor and had a ball on Tuesday and a great deal to think about, said, "Well, Mary?" rather more kindly than usual.

"He asked you for the two first."

"He did. It is a great trial and I mean to bear it nobly."

"Lizzy," said Mary, "is it a binding-night?"

Elizabeth turned round.

"It is a private ball," she said, "at a hired house, given by a young man who has been in the county nine weeks. Of course it is not a binding-night. There has not been a binding-night in this neighborhood since Aunt Philips was married, and that was at the assembly rooms, with the whole parish in it, and a settlement signed in the morning."

"A binding-night is not a thing that is declared," said Mary. "That is what everybody has wrong. It is only a room with a ward on it, and music, and two people standing up first, and enough of the county present that it may be said to have been done in the sight of the neighborhood. Colwood is very clear. There are four conditions and none of them is that anybody should mean it."

"Mary—"

"They have put a new ward on the room," said Mary. "You said so at dinner. You said Mr. Bingley said his friend would not let it alone."

Elizabeth stood with her hand on the back of the chair.

"That is nothing," she said. "That is a man being careful of a house that is not his."

"Very likely." Mary was looking at the carpet, as she always did. "Only, the first two dances are the only ones that carry any weight in them at all, and the rest are nothing whatever, and everybody thinks it is the other way about because the first two are the dull ones. And a man in orders, of an old parish, who has the keeping of the offices annexed to a living — standing up first, in a warded room, before the neighborhood, with a daughter of the blood of a house he is to come into—"

She stopped.