will be disregarded? Why did not you seek legal redress?{102}”
“There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to

give me no hope from law. A man of honour could not have doubted the

intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it—or to treat it as a merely

conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim

to it by extravagance, imprudence, in short, anything or nothing.

Certain it is that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I

was of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no

less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done

anything to deserve to lose it. I have a warm unguarded temper, and I

may perhaps have sometimes spoken my opinion of him, and to him, too

freely. I can recall nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are very

different sort of men, and that he hates me.”
“This is quite shocking! He deserves to be publicly disgraced.”
“Some time or other he will be—but it shall not be by me. Till I

can forget his father, I can never defy or expose him.”
Elizabeth honoured him for such feelings, and thought him handsomer than

ever as he expressed them.
“But what,” said she, after a pause, “can have been his motive? what can

have induced him to behave so cruelly?”
“A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot but

attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me

less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father’s uncommon

attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had

not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood—the sort

of preference which was often given me.{103}”
“I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as this—though I have never liked

him, I had not thought so very ill of him—I had supposed him to be

despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of

descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as

this!”