第123章[第1頁/共5頁]

“I wish I could say anything to comfort you,”replied Elizabeth;“but it is wholly out of my power.You must feel it;and the usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have always so much.”

“Let me first see how he behaves,”said she;“it will then be early enough for expectation.”

“Some acquaintance or other,my dear,I suppose;I am sure I do not know.”

She sat intently at work,striving to be composed,and without daring to lift up her eyes,till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the door.Jane looked a little paler than usual,but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected.On the gentlemen's appearing,her colour increased;yet she received them with tolerable ease,and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.

The colour which had been driven from her face,returned for half a minute with an additional glow,and a smile of delight added lustre to her eyes,as she thought for that space of time that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken.But she would not be secure.

Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could.She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire,she saw him, from her dressing-room window,enter the paddock and ride towards the house.