“When I wrote that letter,”replied Darcy,“I believed myself perfectly calm and cool, but I am sce convced that it was written a dreadful bitterness of spirit.”
“The letter,perhaps,began bitterness,but it did not end so. The adieu is charity itself.But thk no more of the letter.The feelgs of the person who wrote,and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then,that every unpleasant circumstance attendg it ought to be forgotten.You must learn some of my philosophy.Thk only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
“I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kd.Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arisg from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of nocence. But with me, it is not so. Paful recollections will trude which cannot,which ought not,to be repelled.I have been a selfish beg all my life, practice,though not prciple.As a child I was taught what was right,but I was not taught to correct my temper.I was given good prciples,but left to follow them pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who,though good themselves(my father,particularly,all that was benevolent and amiable),allowed,encouraged,almost taught me to be selfish and overbearg; to care for none beyond my own family circle;to thk meanly of all the rest of the world;to wish at least to thk meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you,dearest,loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you!You taught me a lesson,hard deed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception.You showed me how sufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of beg pleased.”
“Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?”
“Indeed I had.What will you thk of my vanity?I believed you to be wishg,expectg my addresses.”
“My manners must have been fault,but not tentionally,I assure you.I never meant to deceive you,but my spirits might often lead me wrong.How you must have hated me after that eveng?”
“Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take a proper direction.”
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