Nodiver d.o.o. · Pride & Prejudice · page 533 of 640

Pride & Prejudice – page 533

Pride and Prejudice

“Pray forgive me if I have been very presuming, or at

least do not punish me so far as to exclude me from P. I

shall never be quite happy till I have been all round the

park. A low phaeton, with a nice little pair of ponies,

would be the very thing.

“But I must write no more. The children have been

wanting me this half-hour.

“Yours, very sincerely,

“M. Gardiner.”

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a

flutter of spirits, in which it was difficult to determine

whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The

vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had

produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing

to forward her sister’s match, which she had feared

to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great

to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be

just, from the pain of obligation, were proved beyond

their greatest extent to be true! He had followed them

purposely to town, he had taken on himself all the

trouble and mortification attendant on such a research;

in which supplication had been necessary to a woman

whom he must abominate and despise, and where he

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