Elizabeth studied him. Her dark eyes, often flashing with mischief, were now very deep, hard to understand, but he thought there was sympathy in them. “You cannot really love someone if you cannot accept and tolerate their faults.”
“That is not what I meant to say — you are afoolif you love someone without any care or concern for what they do. The behavior they have shown before is your best guide to what the future will be. And if you insist on loving such a person they will abuse your good will and your good nature again and again. They will smile at you. Charm you. Smile at you again. And you’ll believe them, believe that they can still be trusted. And then again. And then they will spit in your face when you finally cease to give them everything they beg of you. And then they will seek their revenge, when you didnothingto them.”
Wickham.
Hestilldid not actually know if Wickham had taken Georgiana’s virginity. She said he had not. She certainly was not pregnant. But Darcy had no way toactuallyknow.
He saw once more that image which had haunted his dreams for months: The dueling field, Wickham’s grinning face. The crack of a pistol. One of them dead.
He’d loved Wickham so much. They had been so close.
Elizabeth placed her hand on Darcy’s arm.
He briefly placed his hand over hers, and then with a flush both of them drew back from the other.
“You are not speaking in generalities, are you?” she said soberly.
Darcy shook his head.
“That one person proved thoroughly unworthy of your regard is not a reason to mistrust everyone.”
“I do not mistrust everyone.”
“Oh.” She waved her hand about. “That was not what I meant.”
Their eyes met.
Darcy felt a spark in his stomach, and his heart leapt.
She flushed and looked down. “You must be willing to forgive, to forgive your real friends. You are right — sometimes someone who you believed to be a friend might prove to care nothing about you. But a real friend, a true friend, such a person is worth anything.”
Darcy said nothing. He shifted in his chair, feeling uncomfortable, because he still disagreed.
Elizabeth raised her eyes, and said to him, looking closely into him, “You do not need to… it is not important that you think in this matter the way I do. You were hurt.”
“No, I wasn’t. He didn’t hurtme.”
“Then who?”
“Someone who it is my duty to care for.” Darcy gripped his fists together, pressing the left hand so tightly into a fist that the knuckles went white and hurt. “I do not know why I am speaking about this to you. I begin to hint at things that ought not to be told to anyone.”
“I understand. And I will say nothing of this conversation.”
“I thank you.”
The two of them pulled backwards from this perhaps too intense conversation. Darcy picked up his book again, and he pretended to read it once more, but his mind was full of the memory of Elizabeth’s scent and eyes.
She smelled like a garden in spring.
However, presently, Elizabeth put her book back down on the small table beside her and said, “You must surely be careful in coming to resent a person, since you are so steadfast in refusing to let go of your resentment once it is present.”
“I hope to believe that I exercise sound judgement in all such cases. I do not believe myself to ever be hasty, but a man is seldom his own best judge.”
She nodded and picked the book up again.
They did not speak again for the next ten minutes, and then they were joined by Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, and there was not another occasion when Darcy had a chance to privately speak with Elizabeth before she left Netherfield with her sister the following day.
As Darcy stood next to Mr. Bingley and Miss Bingley as they waved at the departing carriage, Darcy’s eyes strained for every sight ofherthrough the window. He recalled how she had touched his arm in sympathy the day before.
