“They had forgotten to leave any message”


“But,” he added, “you will of course wish to have your humble respects

delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you

while you have been here.”
Elizabeth made no objection: the door was then allowed to be shut, and

the carriage drove off.{271}
“Good gracious!” cried Maria, after a few minutes’ silence, “it seems

but a day or two since we first came! and yet how many things have

happened!”
“A great many indeed,” said her companion, with a sigh.
“We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there twice!

How much I shall have to tell!”
Elizabeth privately added, “And how much I shall have to conceal!”
Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm; and

within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they reached Mr. Gardiner’s

house, where they were to remain a few days.
Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of studying her

spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her aunt

had reserved for them. But Jane was to go home with her, and at

Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.
It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even for

Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy’s proposals. To know

that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish

Jane, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own

vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation

to openness as nothing could have conquered, but the state of indecision

in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate,

and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into

repeating something of Bingley, which might only grieve her sister

further.{272}

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“How nicely we are crammed  in.”


CHAPTER XXXIX.

IT was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies set out