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Pride & Prejudice – page 558

JANE AUSTEN

advantage. She was not near enough to hear any of their

discourse, but she could see how seldom they spoke to

each other, and how formal and cold was their manner

whenever they did. Her mother’s ungraciousness, made

the sense of what they owed him more painful to

Elizabeth’s mind; and she would, at times, have given

anything to be privileged to tell him that his kindness

was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the

family.

She was in hopes that the evening would afford some

opportunity of bringing them together; that the whole

of the visit would not pass away without enabling

them to enter into something more of conversation

than the mere ceremonious salutation attending his

entrance. Anxious and uneasy, the period which passed

in the drawing-room, before the gentlemen came, was

wearisome and dull to a degree that almost made her

uncivil. She looked forward to their entrance as the

point on which all her chance of pleasure for the

evening must depend.

“If he does not come to me, then,” said she, “I shall

give him up forever.”

The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as

if he would have answered her hopes; but, alas! the

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