第89章[第1頁/共4頁]

When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very minutely to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected,and always very short.Those to her mother contained little else than that they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as made her quite wild;that she had a new gown,or a new parasol,which she would have described more fully,but was obliged to leave off in a violent hurry,as Mrs.Forster called her,and they were going to the camp;and from her correspondence with her sister,there was still less to be learnt―for her letters to Kitty,though rather longer,were much too full of lines under the words to be made public.

When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham's departure, she found little other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the regiment.Their parties abroad were less varied than before,and at home she had a mother and sister whose constant repinings at the dullness of everything around them threw a real gloom over their domestic circle; and, though Kitty might in time regain her natural degree of sense, since the disturbers of her brain were removed, her other sister, from whose disposition greater evil might be apprehended,was likely to be hardened in all her folly and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a watering-place and a camp.Upon the whole,therefore,she found,what has been sometimes found before,that an event to which she had been looking forward with impatient desire did not,in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself.It was consequently necessary to name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity―to have some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the present, and prepare for another disappointment. Her tour to the Lakes was now the object of her happiest thoughts;it was her best consolation for all the uncomfortable hours which the discontentedness of her mother and Kitty made inevitable;and could she have included Jane in the scheme,every part of it would have been perfect.