She stepped with him, holding the book in her hand.
“You look very well indeed,” Darcy said. “You are now... Miss Bingley once said something about you, that you dressed to make men dislike you. Ever since then I noticed how you did that. But—”
“Miss Bingley said so much,” Elizabeth replied laughing. “I had not thoughtmyselfto be such an object of her regard.”
“I believe it was part of an argument to her brother about why he should not marry the woman who did in fact become Mrs. Bingley.”
Elizabeth laughed. “That soundsmorelike her. I always suspected that she considered the Bennets to be beneath her. But she and Jane are good enough friendsnow, and there would be no benefit in promoting family disunion.”
“Miss Bingley has always seemed to me,” Darcy said, “ss a woman capable of acting as best accords with her interest in any situation. But I do not mean to insult her—she does so in a way that is perfectly proper, and perfectly...” He frowned. “You could not, I think. I do not think either of us could change our manners or ideas so quickly as might make our situation the easiest.”
She smiled without looking at him. “And now you see that I have ceased to dressing to disoblige men—Mary insisted. A condition of my visit.”
“You look happy.”
And as soon as he said that a frown came over Elizabeth’s face again. She looked at the grasses and mosses, and the bark of the trees. It was not a particularly happy look.
They passed out of the grove into the more general open air around the park, and Darcy pointed to a little Grecian temple in the distance. “Have you yet seen the view from there?”
At Elizabeth shaking her head that she had not, Darcy led them up towards the eminence.
She still did not say anything, and it made something in Darcy anxious that he had somehow offended her. Why would that feel so terrible?
And how could his having said that she looked happy make her unhappy?
“Do tell me what is on your mind,” Darcy asked when they reached the marble columns. He gestured for her to sit on a bench and sat down across from her.
“The view from here is a fine one,” Elizabeth said. “Your aunt is fortunate to have such a house.”
“It is more correctly,” Darcy said with a smile, “Anne’shouse, which she merely allows her mother to use. But Anne is not the sort of person to ever make any difficulty for someone with a strong will.”
Instead of this amusing her, Elizabeth turned completely dour again. Her face looked quite sad. She smoothed out the line of her dress and picked up a small white stone from the ground.
Why was it suddenly so difficult to speak to Elizabeth? He remembered it always being easy.
“Is that why you are to marry her?” Elizabeth asked. She tossed the stone across the ground and watched it bouncing away, until it rolled down the side of the hill.
“What?” Darcy replied. “Who has been saying such things—I am not engaged to Miss de Bourgh. Why would—”
This suggested to Darcy a reason why she might be unhappy. Even he could not pretend to himself that there was no sign of her admiring him. But this was not something he felt able to think about. It would be, in any case, presumptuous to assume that the question came from such a source.
She looked at him with some startlement and clear eyes. Her perfect lips forming an O. “You are not to marry Miss de Bourgh?”
“No. Never.”
“But...” Elizabeth growled. “Of course. I should only have expected falsity from such a source.”
“Who?”
“That gentleman who I am sure you are yet cursing yourself for not making your parson. Mr. Wickham. Your loss was the regiment’s gain.” Elizabeth snickered. “Mr. Bennet likes to describe how he simpered and made love to us all.”
“Mr. Wickham?” Darcy thought about that answer. “I can see whyhemight think that.”
“Mr. Collins also confirmed it...though he said something like ‘you were intended for her daughter by Lady Catherine.’”
“Thathas the virtue of being the simple truth. But my aunt sometimes mistakes the difference between what she intends for others and what they intend for themselves.” Darcy looked over the park and at the manor house itself with annoyance. He stood. “Let us finish our turn about. But I can tell you that I will never marry Anne. I am not bound to her by affection, and I do not consider myself as being bound by honor.”
They walked down the hill and started around again. Elizabeth was slightly smiling, and Darcy perceived her to be in a better mood.
