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“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!”

“Long time in even scale The battle hung.”

[227] Each equal weight.

Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her husband’s incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before they did. As the day of his arrival drew near,--

—“Paradise Lost,” ii. 450.

“Wherefore do I assume These royalties and not refuse to reign, Refusing to accept as great a share Of hazard as of honour, due alike to him Who reigns, and so much to him due Of hazard more, as he above the rest High honour’d sits.”

“Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait on him. But, however, that shan’t prevent my asking him to dine here, I am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for him.”

“’Tis an etiquette I despise,” said he. “If he wants our society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back again.”

[226] Why boast we.

Dryden’s Virgil, ii. 825.

[225] “Where yon disorder’d heap of ruin lies, Stones rent from stones,—where clouds of dust arise,— Amid that smother, Neptune holds his place, Below the wall’s foundation drives his mace, And heaves the building from the solid base.”

His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to Netherfield.

—Dryden’s Virgil, i. 142.

“No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool’s errand again.”

“As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet, “you will wait on him, of course.”

“In those bloody fields Where Simois rolls the bodies and the shields Of heroes.”

The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.

In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her feelings, in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were more disturbed, more unequal, than she had often seen them.

[224] Simois, railing, &c.

—Chapman.