“I have heard from authority, which I thought as good, that it was left you conditionally only,and at the will of the present patron.”
“I did hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present;that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders,and that the business had been compromised accordingly.”
“I do not know.Mrs.Bennet and Lydia are going in the carriage to Meryton.And so, my dear sister, I find, from our uncle and aunt,that you have actually seen Pemberley.”
They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast to get rid of him;and unwilling,for her sister's sake, to provoke him, she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile:
“And what did she say?”
“Yes;he introduced us to his sister.”
“True.Are the others coming out?”
“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 for