you—and so I warn you. I have done with you from this very day. I told

you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you again,

and you will find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking

to undutiful children. Not that I have much pleasure, indeed, in talking

to anybody. People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have

no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it

is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that any

attempt to reason with or soothe her would only increase the irritation.

She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of them till

they were joined by Mr. Collins, who entered with an air more stately

than usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to the girls,—
“Now, I do insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold your tongues, and

let Mr. Collins and me have a little conversation together.{145}”
Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty followed, but

Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she could; and Charlotte,

detained first by the civility of Mr. Collins, whose inquiries after

herself and all her family were very minute, and then by a little

curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending

not to hear. In a doleful voice Mrs. Bennet thus began the projected

conversation:—
“Oh, Mr. Collins!”
“My dear madam,” replied he, “let us be for ever silent on this point.

Far be it from me,” he presently continued, in a voice that marked his

displeasure, “to resent the behaviour of your daughter. Resignation to

inevitable evils is the duty of us all: the peculiar duty of a young man

who has been so fortunate as I have been, in early preferment; and, I

trust, I am resigned. Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt of my

positive happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand; for I