correspondence was as regular and frequent as it ever had been: that it

should be equally unreserved was impossible. Elizabeth could never

address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over;

and, though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the

sake of what had been rather than what was. Charlotte’s first letters

were received with a good deal of eagerness: there could not but be

curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how she would

like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare pronounce herself to

be; though, when the letters were read, Elizabeth felt that Charlotte

expressed herself on every point exactly as she might have foreseen. She

wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing

which she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and

roads, were all to her taste, and Lady Catherine’s behaviour was most

friendly and obliging. It was Mr. Collins’s picture of Hunsford and

Rosings rationally softened; and Elizabeth perceived that she must wait

for her own visit there, to know the rest.
Jane had already written a few lines to her sister, to announce their

safe arrival in London; and when she wrote again, Elizabeth hoped it

would be in her power to say something of the Bingleys.{185}
Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as impatience

generally is. Jane had been a week in town, without either seeing or

hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it, however, by supposing that

her last letter to her friend from Longbourn had by some accident been

lost.
“My aunt,” she continued, “is going to-morrow into that part of the

town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in Grosvenor Street.”
She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss Bingley.

“I did not think Caroline in spirits,” were her words, “but she was very

glad to see me, and reproached me for giving her no notice of my coming