“That is not the same thing,” he said after amoment, “as being indifferent to your own merit.”
Elizabeth’s expression altered slightly. It was not astonishment exactly, but something near it, as though she had been prepared for contradiction, perhaps even for hauteur, but not for this.
“You are kinder in your distinctions than I had supposed,” she said.
“I mean only to be just.”
She was silent, and Darcy, who had not intended to say even that much on so dangerous a subject, found himself unwilling to let her continue under an error that had suddenly become intolerable to him.
“You mistake me,” he said, with more feeling than he had wished to betray. “If my manner has ever led you to believe that I thought lightly of your understanding or your character, I must regret it.”
Elizabeth did look at him then, and with an attention so direct that he immediately wished for greater command over his own expressions.
“My understanding?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
He might still, perhaps, have withdrawn into general civility. It would have been more prudent to do so. Yet prudence, though never wholly absent from Darcy’s mind, had lately grown less effectual wherever Elizabeth Bennet was concerned. He hadcome prepared to speak of Wickham and nothing else, but the idea that she had long believed herself an object of his contempt was impossible to bear.
“I have never thought lightly of either,” he said. “On the contrary, I have long regarded your judgement as uncommonly intelligent. To say nothing of your wit, which I consider unusually charming.”
If he had been less agitated, he might have heard how near such an admission approached a declaration of a very different kind, even as he spoke it. As it was, he only perceived the fact when Elizabeth’s countenance changed once more, and when she looked away rather than answer him immediately.
The pause that followed was not long, but it was enough to restore his recollection of where they were and why he had sought her. He felt at once that he had said too much and not enough. Too much, because any praise of her from him must appear strangely out of place in the present circumstances.
And not enough, because what he truly felt must remain unspoken.
Elizabeth drew a breath and said, with an effort at lightness which did not entirely conceal her uncertainty, “You astonish me, Mr Darcy. I had not understood that we held one another in such esteem.”
He seized at once upon the only safety still available to him, which was the original purpose of the interview.
“I did not come,” he said, and was obliged to begin again more steadily, “I did not come to speak of my esteem, however justly or unjustly you may think it bestowed. I came because I believed it my duty to warn you.”
The playfulness vanished from her face at once. “To warn me?”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth waited in silence, but the gravity of her manner now was very different from the half-amused composure with which she had first undertaken the walk. Whatever she might have expected from him, she had not expected this. Darcy, who had imagined the opening of the subject many times before coming to Longbourn, found that the words were no easier to arrange now than they had been in solitude. He could not begin where he must end, and every lesser beginning seemed inadequate.
At last he said, “I have reason to believe that you have been encouraged to think well of a particular man, and that what you have heard of him has been so managed as to mislead you entirely.”
A faint colour rose again in Elizabeth’s cheeks, though whether from displeasure or surprise he could not yet determine. “I believe I could name theman of whom you speak.”
“I am sure you could,” Darcy said quietly. “I speak of George Wickham.”
Her countenance grew more guarded. “You need not trouble yourself, Mr Darcy. I am already acquainted with Mr Wickham’s history, at least in part.”
Darcy had expected no less, yet to hear Wickham’s name spoken by her in that tone of composed confidence was enough to awaken all the indignation he had been striving to master since he first saw them together in Meryton.
“You know what he has chosen to tell,” he answered. “You do not know the truth.”
Elizabeth looked at him steadily, and though her voice remained perfectly civil, there was a coolness in it now which had not been there before. “You accuse him of dissembling, then.”
“That, I cannot say without knowing what he has told you,” Darcy replied. “But there are things I believe you ought to know. Things which would certainly change your opinion of Wickham, and which I highly doubt he has told you.”
“That is a serious accusation.”
“It is.”
