“For my own part,”she rejoined,“I must confess that I never could see any beauty in her.Her face is too thin;her complexion has no brilliancy;and her features are not at all handsome.Her nose wants character―there is nothing marked in its lines.Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes,which have sometimes been called so fine,I could never see anything extraordinary in them.They have a sharp,shrewish look,which I do not like at all;and in her air altogether,there is a self-sufficiency without fashion,which is intolerable.”
“Yes,”replied Darcy,who could contain himself no longer,“but that was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”
“How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning,Mr.Darcy,”she cried;“I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she is since the winter.She is grown so brown and coarse!Louisa and I were agreeing that we should not have known her again.”
However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he contented himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other alteration than her being rather tanned, no miraculous consequence of travelling in the summer.