Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/94

 cousin. This arrangement is a perpetual grievance to Mrs. Bennet, who cannot be made to understand the nature of an entail, and makes thereupon the remark which is so much truer than appears at first sights that "there is no knowing how estates will go when once they come to be entailed!"

The Bingleys, consisting of Mr. Bingley, a married and an unmarried sister, and the former's husband, come to reside on an estate near the Bennets, and Mr. Darcy comes with them; he is Mr. Bingley's great friend, and Miss Bingley has formed the intention of becoming his wife. The Bingleys and Bennets meet at a ball, where Bingley falls in love at first sight with Jane Bennet, while Darcy is much bored by the whole thing, and, being urged to dance with Elizabeth Bennet, answers hastily and coldly that "she is not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humour to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men." Elizabeth overhears him, and registers a vow of eternal dislike to him. From this time, though neither the gentleman nor the lady have any wish to meet again, circumstances, which neither of them can control, force them into an intimacy, in the course of which Darcy, who has begun by despising Elizabeth as a mere country-town belle, and believes himself perfectly safe from her attacks, falls hopelessly in love with her, although she has no idea of it. When at last he is impelled to throw himself at her feet, she rejects him indignantly, not only, it should be said, on account of the original insult, but also because she believes him to have acted treacherously and basely in some occurrences of his past life. She has, however, been deceived, in the stories she has heard, which her original dislike to him made her accept too readily,