Consoled by this resolution,she was the better able to bear her husband's incivility;though it was very mortifying to know that her neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before they did.As the day of his arrival drew near:

“Oh,lord!I don't know.Not these two or three years,perhaps.”

Elizabeth did not know what to make of it.Had she not seen him in Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there with no other view than what was acknowledged;but she still thought him partial to Jane, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming there with his friend's permission,or being bold enough to come without it.

“It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is married,but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon.”

“Yet it is hard,”she sometimes thought,“that this poor man cannot come to a house which he has legally hired,without raising all this speculation!I will leave him to himself.”

The loss of her daughter made Mrs.Bennet very dull for several days.

“You may depend on it,”replied the other,“for Mrs.Nicholls was in Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose to know the truth of it;and she told me that it was certain true.He comes down on Thursday at the latest,very likely on Wednesday.She was going to the butcher's,she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday,and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.”