Nodiver d.o.o. · Pride & Prejudice · page 348 of 640

Pride & Prejudice – page 348

JANE AUSTEN

gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust!

How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a

humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have

been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has

been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one,

and offended by the neglect of the other, on the

very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted

prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away,

where either were concerned. Till this moment I never

knew myself.”

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 remem-

bering what Charlotte’s opinion had always been.

Neither could she deny the justice of his description

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.

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