Pride and Prejudice and Kitties, стр. 18
When Elizabeth, however, described Mr. Darcy’s long silences, even Charlotte was doubtful.
Perhaps, the two agreed, Mr. Darcy was merely bored, for the field sports were over and he was for the present consigned to being a house cat.
It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam came because he had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded by her own satisfaction in being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her former favourite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s manners, she believed he might have the best informed mind.
But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more difficult to understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice—a sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really animated. Mrs. Collins knew not what to make of him. Colonel Fitz-william’s occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told her; and as she would have liked to have believed this change the effect of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza, she set herself seriously to work to find it out.—She watched him whenever they were at Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford; but without much success. He certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind.
ELIZABETH OFTEN ENJOYED prowling around the park while she was at Hunsford. She encountered Mr. Darcy more than once in the wood during these walks, which perplexed her. The circumstance struck her as perverse, even for a cat, because she was perfectly sensible of the fact that Mr. Darcy took little pleasure in her company. Yet he persisted in sniffing the same shrubs she sniffed, climbing the same trees she scampered up to avoid him, even pouncing on the very insects she intended to capture for herself. His curiosity further expressed itself in questions about her home in Hertfordshire, what she thought of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’s union, and whether she looked forward to exploring the great rooms of Rosings. Towards what could these questions tend?
On one such a solitary ramble, Elizabeth met not Mr. Darcy, but Colonel Fitzwilliam. He accompanied her back to the parsonage, and in the course of their conversation revealed that Darcy had lately saved a friend from the inconvenience of a most imprudent match by disentangling him from the velvet claws of a “certain country cat.” That the friend was Bingley, and the certain “country cat” her sister Jane, Elizabeth could not doubt.
Back in her own room in Hunsford, Elizabeth was so agitated by the pain Mr. Darcy had caused Jane by separating her from Mr. Bingley that she began shedding profusely and was suited by neither humor nor hair to present herself at Rosings. The Hunsford party, thus, went on without her.
During the course of the evening, Elizabeth pondered what Mr. Darcy could have objected to in her sister. She settled the matter by deciding it was nothing more than the Gardiners’ residence in Cheapside, and Mr. Gardiner’s propensity to hunt rats in his own warehouses in London.
She was engaged one day as she walked, in re-perusing Jane’s last letter, and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane had not written in spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by Mr. Darcy, she saw on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam was meeting her.
. . .
“I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of having some body at his disposal [said Elizabeth]. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps his sister does as well for the present, and, as she is under his sole care, he may do what he likes with her.”
“No,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “that is an advantage which he must divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of Miss Darcy.”
“Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Darcy spirit, she may like to have her own way.”
As she spoke, she observed him looking at her earnestly; and the manner in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Darcy likely to give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she had somehow or other got pretty near the truth. She directly replied,
“You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I dare say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. She is a very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley.”
WHEN EVERYONE HAD gone, Elizabeth employed herself in batting about Jane’s letters (which of course, put her in an even worse humor with Mr. Darcy). Thank goodness he would soon be leaving Rosings!
A moment later, Elizabeth was startled by the sound of the doorbell. She scooted under the couch in an instant, where she always fled when the doorbell rang. (As distressing were her reflections on Jane’s heartbreak and Mr. Darcy’s heartlessness, they were nothing compared to the ringing of a doorbell.) Perhaps, thought Elizabeth, peeking out, it was Colonel Fitzwilliam. But