“La!”replied Kitty,“it looks just like that man that used to be with him before.Mr.what's-his-name.That tall,proud man.”
Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely kept her place at the table;but Elizabeth,to satisfy her mother,went to the window―she looked,―she saw Mr.Darcy with him,and sat down again by her sister.
Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could.She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire,she saw him, from her dressing-room window,enter the paddock and ride towards the house.
“I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,”said Jane to her sister.“It would be nothing;I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;but she does not know,no one can know,how much I suffer from what she says.Happy shall I be,when his stay at Netherfield is over!”