Mr. Darcy's Diary, Amanda Grange [elon musk reading list TXT] 📗

gratitude, I would now thank

you. But I cannot. I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly.

I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been

most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of

short duration.The feelings which, you tell me, have long

prevented the acknowledgement of your regard, can have

little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.’

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I looked at her in astonishment. She had refused me!

Never once had I imagined she might do so. Not once

in all those nights when I had lain awake, telling myself

how impossible such a union would be, had I pictured

this outcome.

This was to be the end of all my struggles? To be

rejected? And in such a manner! I! A Darcy! To be

answered as though I was a fortune-hunter or an undesirable suitor. My astonishment quickly gave way to

resentment. So resentful did I feel that I would not open

my lips until I believed I had mastered my emotion.

‘And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!’ I said at last. ‘I might, perhaps, wish to

be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am

thus rejected. But it is of small importance.’

‘I might as well enquire,’ replied she heatedly, ‘why

with so evident a design of offending and insulting me,

you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will,

against your reason and even against your character? Was

not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I

have other provocations.You know I have. Had not my

own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that

any consideration would tempt me to accept the man

who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the

happiness of a most beloved sister?’

I felt myself change colour. So she had heard of that.

I hoped she had not. It could not be expected to make

her think well of me. But I had nothing to be ashamed

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of. I had acted in the best interests of my friend.

‘I have every reason in the world to think ill of you.

No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part

you acted there,’ she went on.

I felt my expression hardening. Unjust? Ungenerous?

No indeed.

‘You dare not, you cannot deny that you have been

the principal, if not the only means of dividing them

from each other, of exposing one to the censure of the

world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision

for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.’

I could not believe what I was hearing. Caprice and

instability? Who would judge Bingley capricious for

removing to London when he had business to attend to?

Derision for disappointed hopes? Miss Bennet had

had no hopes, unless they had been planted in her mind

by her mother, who could see no further than Bingley’s

five thousand pounds a year.

Misery of the acutest kind? Yes, that was what Bingley

would have suffered if he had voiced his feelings. He

would have been joined to a woman who was beneath

him.

‘I have no wish to deny that I did everything in my

power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I

rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder

than towards myself.’

Elizabeth ignored my remark and said, ‘But it is not

merely this affair on which my dislike is founded. Long

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before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided.

Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received

many months ago from Mr Wickham. On this subject,

what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? Or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?’

Wickham! She could not have found a name more

calculated to wound and, at the same time, disgust me.

‘You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,’ I remarked in agitation.

I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.

What was it to me if she showed an interest in George

Wickham? After her refusal of my hand, nothing about

Elizabeth had any right to interest me ever again.

And yet the mortification I felt intensified, and I

found a new emotion in my breast, a most unwelcome

one. Jealousy. I found it intolerable that she should prefer

George Wickham to me! That she should be unable to

see through his smiling exterior to the black heart

beneath.

‘Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can

help feeling an interest in him?’

‘His misfortunes!’ I repeated. What tale had he been

spinning her? Wickham, who had had everything. Who

had been spoilt and petted in childhood and, despite that,

had turned into one of the most dissolute, profligate

young men of my acquaintance.

As I thought of the money my father had lavished on

him, the opportunities he had had and the help I myself

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had given him, I could not help my lip’s curling.‘Yes, his

misfortunes have been great indeed.’

‘And of your infliction,’ she said angrily. ‘You have

reduced him to his present state of poverty, comparative

poverty. You have withheld the advantages, which you

must know to have been designed for him. You have

deprived the best years of his life, of that independence

which was no less his due than his desert.You have done

all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.’

‘And this,’ I cried, as, goaded beyond endurance, I

began to pace the room, ‘is your opinion of me! This is

the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for

explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps these offences

might have been overlooked, had not your pride been

hurt by my honest confession of