Page 61 of Hard Home

"It is a great pity," said Lady Catherine, "and there is a remedy, and it has been declined." She looked at Elizabeth forthe first time with actual attention. "Are you out, all five sisters at once?"

"Yes, all."

"All! — What, all five out at once? Very odd! — And you only the second. — The younger ones out before the elder are married! — Your younger sisters must be very young?"

"Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhapssheis full young to be much in company. But really, ma'am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early. — The last born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth, as the first. And to be kept back onsucha motive! — I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind."

"Upon my word," said her Ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. — Pray, what is your age?"

"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth smiling, "your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.

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It was between the removes that she did it.

Mr. Collins was speaking, at length, about the road to Bromley; and Elizabeth, who had been holding herself in for an hour and three quarters, and who had come to that house at her friend's asking, looked down the table at Miss Anne de Bourgh.

She had expected — she had put it to herself in the plainest words in her own room that morning, so that she should not deceive herself afterwards — she had expected to find nothing. An invalid; a small, tired, dim, unused person; a woman of nine-and-twenty who had been ill since childhood and had beencarried about in a phaeton and had never had one interesting hour.

What she found was a fire in a shut room.

There is no better way to say it and Elizabeth never afterwards found one. Everything was there. All of it: quickness, and temper, and a great deal of anger, and an understanding that had been going full pace behind that gray face for nine-and-twenty years with nothing whatever to do; and it was allbanked— piled up and pressed down and covered over and kept, the way a fire is kept in overnight so that nothing shall be spent before morning.

Not damaged. Not dim. Not one particle of it had ever been used.

There was a woman at that table who had never in her life spent a word, or sworn an oath, or given a promise, or held a hand in a figure at a dance, or told a servant to fetch anything, or said yes; and she was full to the top, and she had been being filled since she was born, and somebody was keeping her that way on purpose.

And Anne de Bourgh raised her eyes from her plate and looked straight back at Elizabeth Bennet.

It lasted perhaps a second and a half. There was nothing in her face; her face did not do anything at all; she was a pale young woman with a shawl looking down a table. But she held Elizabeth's eyes for that second and a half, deliberately, and then — with a very small movement, the sort of thing that could be a tic, or a draft, or nothing — she shook her head.

Once.

Then she looked back at her plate, and said something inaudible to Mrs. Jenkinson, who at once got up and moved the screen.

"Miss Bennet," said Lady Catherine de Bourgh, from the head of the table, without turning round and without any particular emphasis, "do not do that again."

The room went on. Mr. Collins said that the road to Bromley was much improved. Sir William said something about St. James's. Charlotte asked Mrs. Jenkinson whether she found the evenings drawing out.

Elizabeth Bennet sat perfectly still with her hands in her lap and discovered that her heart was going like a bird's, and that she had been in Kent for six days, and that she was engaged to dine at that table twice a week for five weeks more.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sir William stayed only a week, and when he was gone the family went on in its usual way.

Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden, or in reading and writing, and looking out of the window in his own book room, which fronted the road. The room in which the ladies sat was backwards. Elizabeth had at first rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer the dining parlor for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a pleasanter aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement.

More than once did Elizabeth in her ramble within the Park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. — She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else wasbrought; and to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first, that it was a favorite haunt of hers.

That was later. In the first fortnight there was nothing to disturb them but the weather, and a great deal of quadrille.

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The two gentlemen came on the Monday before Easter.

Mr. Collins had been walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest assurance of it; and after making his bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great intelligence.