“Indeed!”cried Mr.Wickham with a look which did not escape her.“And pray,may I ask?―”But checking himself,he added,in a gayer tone,“Is it in address that he improves?Has he deigned to add aught of civility to his ordinary style?―for I dare not hope,”he continued in a lower and more serious tone,“that he is improved in essentials.”
While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to rejoice over her words,or to distrust their meaning. There was a something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive and anxious attention,while she added:
“Nearly three weeks.”
“How long did you say he was at Rosings?”
“When I said that he improved on acquaintance,I did not mean that his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.”
“And you saw him frequently?”
“Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves upon acquaintance.”
Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated look;for a few minutes he was silent,till,shaking off his embarrassment,he turned to her again,and said in the gentlest of accents:
“Yes,almost every day.”
“Oh, no!”said Elizabeth.“In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.”
On the very last day of the regiment's remaining at Meryton, he dined,with other of the officers,at Longbourn;and so little was Elizabeth disposed to part from him in good humour,that on his making some inquiry as to the manner in which her time had passed at Hunsford,she mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and Mr. Darcy's having both spent three weeks at Rosings,and asked him, if he was acquainted with the former.