Disdain, Agony, Hope, and Love #Wattys2020

Chapter 8

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In the evening Miss Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing room. The loo table, however, did not appear. Mr Hurst and Mr Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game. Darcy sat down to write again to Georigiana, but as he wrote his greetings, he was dismayed when Miss Bingley took a seat beside him and watched the progress of his letter, and repeatedly called off his attention by messages to his sister.

"How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!"

He made no answer, in a vain hope that she would leave him in peace.

"You write uncommonly fast."

"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly."

He continued writing. Unfortunately, he could not be as intimate with his sister as he would have liked, not with Miss Bingley looking over his shoulder.

"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of the year! Letters of business too! How odious I should think them!"

"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours."

If he were not a gentleman, or he did not live in a time when propriety was the rule, he would have behaved in a less than gentlemanly manner towards Miss Bingley. Instead, he was forced to put up with her.

"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her."

He looked up to near the beginning of his letter. It was already done.

"I have already told her so once, by your desire."

His grip on the pen tightened in his annoyance.

"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well."

"Thank you - but I always mend my own."

"How can you contrive to write so even?"

He was silent.

"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp, and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley's."

"Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? -- At present I have not room to do them justice."

If you wish to say so much to her, why don't you write to her yourself? he thought savagely. I know that you have memorised our address.

"Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr Darcy?"

"They are generally long; but whether always charming, it is not for me to determine."

His temper was not improved in that he could sense Miss Elizabeth watching them and silently laughing.

"It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter, with ease, cannot write ill," said Miss Bingley. Ill. That is probably the nature of your short missives.

"That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her brother, "because he does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"

Bingley did his best to do as little reading and writing than was absolutely necessary.

"My style of writing is very different from yours."

"Oh!" cried Miss Bingley, "Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest."

Darcy smiled a little. He knew how hard it was to read one of Bingley's letters.