“And this is your real opinion!This is your final resolve!Very well.I shall now know how to act.Do not imagine,Miss Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable;but,depend upon it,I will carry my point.”
And she rose as she spoke.Lady Catherine rose also,and they turned back.Her ladyship was highly incensed.
Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here;for to acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.
“She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the Collinses were well.She is on her road somewhere,I dare say,and so, passing through Meryton, thought she might as well call on you.I suppose she had nothing particular to say to you,Lizzy?”
Though Elizabeth would not,for the mere purpose of obliging Lady Catherine,have answered this question,she could not but say,after a moment's deliberation:
“You are then resolved to have him?”
“You can now have nothing further to say,”she resentfully answered.“You have insulted me in every possible method.I must beg to return to the house.”