第123章[第2頁/共5頁]

“There is a gentleman with him,mamma,”said Kitty;“who can it be?”

“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy!―and so it does, I vow.Well, any friend of Mr. Bingley's will always be welcome here, to be sure;but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”

“I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,”said Jane to her sister.“It would be nothing;I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;but she does not know,no one can know,how much I suffer from what she says.Happy shall I be,when his stay at Netherfield is over!”

Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could.She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire,she saw him, from her dressing-room window,enter the paddock and ride towards the house.