Page 121 of Hard Home

And then, because she was two-and-twenty and had spent a summer learning things:

"He might have told me, and I refused him in April in a way that made it impossible, and I have not written to him since, and there is not one thing on this earth that gives me the right to be told."

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She had scarcely got in when there was another letter, from Kent, in Charlotte's hand, and it had been written in great haste and had no beginning.

Lizzy. I have four minutes before the boy goes.

On Tuesday her Ladyship had a letter at breakfast which she read twice and did not comment upon, which she has never once done in seven months. She then asked Mr. Collins nine questions about your family, in order, beginning with your father's health and ending with your age; and Mr. Collins answered all nine and was very much gratified to be consulted.

At dinner she said, apropos of nothing whatever, that there were connections which could not be permitted to take place, and that it was the duty of persons of rank to prevent them while they were yet preventable, and that she had never in her life shrunk from a disagreeable interview.

Yesterday she ordered the traveling carriage for Thursday and would not say where.

I do not know what she has heard or from whom, though I could name the woman in Meryton if it would do any good, and it would not. I know only that she is coming, that it is you, and that she will do it in a room with nobody in it.

Do you remember what I told you in the lane in November about a man who does what he is told? It applies more particularly to a woman who has never been refused.

Say nothing to Mr. Collins if he writes, which he will.

C. C.

Elizabeth read it standing in the hall.

She will get you into a room or a garden with nobody in it, and she will ask you to promise her a thing. It will be very reasonable. Do not promise her anything.

Nine-and-twenty years of it, spent in a lane in Kent on a woman she would never see again.

"Very well," said Elizabeth.

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On the Monday, Mrs. Bennet came into the breakfast room with her cap crooked and her voice going before her.

"Well, Jane, I have such news — Mrs. Long has just been here — Netherfield is taken again!"

Jane put down her cup with great care.

"Taken by Mr. Bingley, mama?"

"By Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Darcy along with him, and they are to be down on Wednesday or Thursday — Mrs. Nicholls was in Meryton yesterday ordering the meat, and she told Mrs. Long's cook that there is to be a great deal done to the house and that the gentlemen are to shoot, and that Mr. Darcy has taken the lease himself and Mr. Bingley is only staying with him, though I am sure I do not see why, when it is Mr. Bingley's house by rights and always was—"

"Mr. Darcy has taken it," said Elizabeth.

"So Mrs. Nicholls says, and much good may it do him, a disagreeable proud man, and I am sure I do not care if he never sets foot in this house. But Mr. Bingley! Jane, my love, you must have the muslin done up, and — oh! but I am not going to say one word about it, for I am sure I have learned my lesson, and if he means nothing by it he means nothing, and it is nothing whatever to us."

She said nothing whatever about it for the rest of the day, at intervals of about four minutes.

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Elizabeth went into the library that evening and found her father asleep in his chair at seven o'clock, which she had never in her life seen.

She stood in the doorway a moment.

He had come in from the shrubbery at four, having walked to the end of it and back, which was the whole of what he now did out of doors; and there was a book open face down on his knee, and his spectacles had slid, and he looked exactly like a man of two-and-fifty asleep in a chair, and she stood there and made herself look at him properly, in the way she had learned to look at people, which she had been avoiding in that room since August.

There was nothing wrong with him. That was the thing.