“You have.Yes,there was something in that;I told you so from the first,you may remember.”
“I was surprised to see Darcy in town last month.We passed each other several times.I wonder what he can be doing there.”
“Certainly,”he replied,biting his lips.Elizabeth hoped she had silenced him;but he soon afterwards said:
“Did you go by the village of Kympton?”
“I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble,my dear sister?”said he,as he joined her.
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 was reduced to meet,frequently meet,reason with,persuade,and finally bribe, the man wh