Darcy spared him a look of grave patience, his stride never faltering.
“If you fear my aunt intends to propose your immediate return to the living of Hunsford, Mr. Collins, you may set your mind at rest. Apparently, Lady Catherine has no intention ofrestoring what has once required such painful explanation, and the parsonage will be settled in a manner that requires no further obligation from you. But my offer for Kympton, within my patronage still stands.”
The relief with which Mr. Collins received this assurance was so visible that gratitude itself seemed to reduce his height.
“You relieve me beyond expression, sir; for as my parents had often observed since I was a boy my health and constitution prosper best at a respectful distance from moral emergencies.”
Ahead of them, Elizabeth and her father found themselves keeping pace with Anne, who seemed to breathe more freely the farther they moved from the immediate shadow of the great house.
“Rosings will feel quite altered after the events of this day, I should imagine,” Elizabeth suggested gently, watching Miss de Bourgh’s face with quiet care.
Anne looked back toward the mansion, pale through the leaves and still magnificent despite the human absurdity recently enacted within its walls.
“Perhaps alteration is not always to be counted as a misfortune,” she replied after a pause. “Habit is often mistaken for peace by those who have never known anything else—particularly by those who benefit most from being constantly obeyed.”
The path narrowed significantly as they entered a more secluded part of the woods, and necessity forced the company to break into pairs. Mr. Collins, having recovered enough of his natural pomposity to begin a lengthy discourse upon the medicinal superiority of the waters at Bath, attached himself toAnne and Mr. Bennet, both of whom submitted with varying degrees of resignation.
Thus Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy found themselves walking a little apart from the others, the silence between them carrying the weight of everything that remained unsaid. It was not an awkward silence, but one made intimate by mutual understanding—born of truths too recently discovered to permit trivial conversation.
At length, Mr. Darcy, as though unwilling to let the silence extend too far, said, “You have now seen something of Kent, Miss Bennet; may I ask how it has answered your expectations?”
“I believe, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth began, though her voice lacked its usual saucy confidence, “that I have been obliged to reconsider a great many of my opinions within a very short time, and I find the effort of adjusting them not a little fatiguing.”
He turned his gaze upon her, his expression unreadable yet intent.
“So considerable a revision, Miss Bennet? I must hope, then, that I have not been entirely overlooked,” he returned, his tone lowered, though without any appearance of design.
She could not immediately determine whether she ought to be amused or reproved by such a speech; but as neither sentiment appeared entirely sufficient to the occasion, Elizabeth chose, with some prudence, to be both.
“I should be very sorry to disappoint you, sir,” she replied, with a composure which owed something to effort, “but I must beg leave to form a considered opinion of you, and that may require some time.”
Darcy regarded her steadily, as though weighing both her words and the manner in which they were delivered. “Time, Miss Bennet?” he said at last. “I had imagined that my character must, by now, be tolerably well understood.”
Elizabeth felt the colour rise, though whether from the challenge or its implication she could not immediately have said. “That may depend, sir,” she returned, with a steadiness which, though maintained, was not entirely without caution, “upon how much one has been inclined to trust first impressions.”
There was a brief pause; and though nothing in his countenance betrayed offence, neither did it invite further ease.
“First impressions,” he repeated, “are sometimes the most difficult to correct, Miss Bennet.”
“Indeed,” Elizabeth replied, more quietly, “and not always the least deserving of correction.”
Their eyes met for a moment longer than was strictly necessary; and though neither chose to pursue the subject further, neither turned away unchanged.
Elizabeth resumed her attention to the path as it narrowed beneath the trees; yet the conversation was not so easily dismissed.
Darcy, on his side, resumed his former composure, though with a slight relaxation which suggested he was not displeased.
“I would not wish you to surrender any opinion without sufficient cause,” he said. “Even when those opinions have been unfavourable to myself.”
“You are very generous, sir,” Elizabeth returned, with a glance that held a trace of her former arch spirit. “Most gentlemen,I believe, would prefer to be well thought of without the inconvenience of deserving it.”
“Then I must be content to differ from most gentlemen,” he replied quietly; “for I have found that undeserved approval is of very little use, except in encouraging errors which must eventually be corrected.”
They walked on for some moments in silence; but it was no longer the silence of constraint. The shade of the trees, and the subdued light which fell through their branches, seemed to favour a more thoughtful composure than either had before possessed.
Elizabeth, though she would not have owned it even to herself, felt that her earlier prejudices, once so firmly held, had begun to lose something of their authority. Yet the habit of mistrust, once formed, does not yield at once to better knowledge; and she was determined that whatever change might be necessary in her judgement should proceed from conviction, not from impulse.
“You spoke just now of expectation,” she said at length, turning her eyes toward the path before them rather than to his face. “I wonder that you should admit to any such sentiment with regard to me, when our acquaintance has been so slight, and—if I may be permitted to say so—not always of the most encouraging kind.”
