Page 39 of Hard Home

Elizabeth was standing by Charlotte, in the middle of saying something about Mr. Collins that was very amusing and that she abandoned in the middle, when Mr. Darcy came up and surprised her into accepting his hand for the next two.

Charlotte tried to console her.

"I dare say you will find him very agreeable."

"Heaven forbid! —Thatwould be the greatest misfortune of all! — To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! — Do not wish me such an evil."

When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to claim her hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a whisper, not to be a simpleton and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man of ten times his consequence. Elizabeth made no answer, and took her place in the set, amazed at the dignity to which she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and reading in her neighbors' looks their equal amazement in beholding it.

They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again silent. After a pause of some minutes she addressed him a second time with

"It isyourturn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. —Italked about the dance, andyouought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples."

He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said.

"Very well. — That reply will do for the present. — Perhaps by and bye I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. — Butnowwe may be silent."

"Do you talk by rule then, while you are dancing?"

"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage ofsome, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible."

"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?"

"Both," replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. — We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."

"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure," said he. "How near it may be tomine, I cannot pretend to say. —Youthink it a faithful portrait undoubtedly."

"I must not decide on my own performance."

He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist the temptation, added, "When you met us there the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance."

The effect was immediate. A deeper shade ofhauteuroverspread his features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth,though blaming herself for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Darcy spoke, and in a constrained manner said,

"Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure hismakingfriends — whether he may be equally capable ofretainingthem, is less certain."

"He has been so unlucky as to loseyourfriendship," replied Elizabeth with emphasis, "and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all his life."

Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject.

He had been on his feet since seven, holding a room with his own blood because there was nothing else left holding it; he had given four days to a ward and then unmade it in nine seconds; and he was at this moment in the third figure of a dance with a young woman whose gloved hand he had taken six times, each of which had cost him rather more than he had to spend.

He was also, in the ordinary way of such things, in love with her.

He had been aware of it since Wednesday.

He would have said — if there had been in England a single person he could have said it to — that the difficulty was not the wanting, which a man may manage, but the fact that she had asked him a question at Netherfield about accomplishment which he had been unable to answer, and had gone home, and had not thought of it again, and that he had thought of nothing else for six days.

"I am trying to make you out," she said presently.

"And what is your success?"

"I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly."

"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that report may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment,as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either."

"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another opportunity."

"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly replied.