第87章

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    “Do not make yourself uneasy,my love.Wherever you and Jane are known you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear to less advantage for having a couple of—or I may say, three—very silly sisters.We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton.Let her go,then.Colonel Forster is a sensible man,and will keep her out of any real mischief;and she is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to anybody.At Brighton she will be of less importance even as a common flirt than she has been here.The officers will find women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being there may teach her her own insignificance.At any rate, she cannot grow many degrees worse,without authorising us to lock her up for the rest of her life.”

    With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content;but her own opinion continued the same,and she left him disappointed and sorry. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty,and to fret over unavoidable evils,or augment them by anxiety,was no part of her disposition.

    Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference with her father,their indignation would hardly have found expression in their united volubility.In Lydia's imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly happiness. She saw, with the creative eye of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing-place covered with officers. She saw herself the object of attention,to tens and to scores of them at present unknown.She saw all the glories of the camp—its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines,crowded with the young and the gay,and dazzling with scarlet;and,to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once.

    Had she known her sister sought to tear her from such prospects and such realities as these,what would have been her sensations?They could have been understood only by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same. Lydia's going to Brighton was all that consoled her for her melancholy conviction of her husband's never intending to go there himself.

    But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed;and their raptures continued, with little intermission, to the very day of Lydia's leaving home.

    Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having been frequently in company with him since her return, agitation was pretty well over;the agitations of formal partiality entirely so.She had even learnt to detect,in the very gentleness which had first delighted her, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary.In his present behaviour to herself,moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure,for the inclination he soon testified of renewing those attentions which had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve,after what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern for him in finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous gallantry;and while she steadily repressed it,could not but feel the reproof contained in his believing,that however long,and for whatever cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, her vanity would be gratified, and her preference secured at any time by their renewal.