He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.
“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.”
In Darcy's presence she dared not mention Wickham's name;but Elizabeth instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in her thoughts;and the various recollections connected with him gave her a moment's distress; but exerting herself vigorously to repel the ill-natured attack,she presently answered the question in a tolerably detached tone.While she spoke, an involuntary glance showed her Darcy, with a heightened complexion, earnestly looking at her,and his sister overcome with confusion, and unable to lift up her eyes.Had Miss Bingley known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in Darcy's opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected with that corps.Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy's meditated elopement.To no creature had it been revealed,where secrecy was possible,except to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley's connections her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it,from the very wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without meaning that it should effect his endeavour to separate him from Miss Bennet,it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern for the welfare of his friend.