(no subject)
"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, "is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps," added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards her, "these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I with greater policy concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination -- by reason, by reflection, by every thing. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?"
Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said,
"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner."
She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued,
"You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it."
Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on.
"From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time."
Elizabeth could scarcely watch him go, so great was her turmoil and her distress. Receiving such a proposal from Mr. Darcy -- he who had been so cruel in his manner towards her beloved sister, unfeeling in his treatment of Mr. Wickham, and prideful in his demeanour to everyone around them! -- left her in such a state that she leaned against the pillar and cried for nearly half an hour, mindless of the cold rain that blew all about her. If it were not for the manner of his sentiments, laying out for her in great detail the numerous offences of her family which induced him to dissuade his dearest friend from such a fate, she might perhaps have been induced to exercise more courtesy in her refusal; but the nature of his manner in pointing them out filled her with an anger and distress which had prohibited the slightest hint of civility and did not dissipate with his departure.
She would have remained there for quite some time to simmer in her indignance and injured pride, had it not been for the abrupt cessation of rainfall, and the shocking discovery that the pillar against which she rested had suddenly become a tree of a most unusual kind. Indeed, her very surroundings were all so different, and the shock of it so great, that it was enough to drive all thought of Mr. Darcy straight from her mind.
There was a path before her, well-travelled from the looks of it, and as Elizabeth had never been one to shirk from walking any distance, she picked up her sodden skirts and set upon it that she might discover what had happened to her. If it were not for enormously disastrous conversation that had just taken place, she might perhaps have been more frightened by this sudden change of locale; but just now such a bizzare happenstance was preferable to thinking about what had just transpired.
[ooc: Elizabeth is somewhere near the compound. It would be very wonderful if someone who knows Jane comes across her quite soon before shock wears off and panic sets in. :)
ETA: since Stu found her first, any threads after that will be after Lizzy has already seen Jane and Darcy in comas and gone to the compound to find some dry clothes so she can look after her sister properly!]
Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said,
"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner."
She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued,
"You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it."
Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on.
"From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time."
Elizabeth could scarcely watch him go, so great was her turmoil and her distress. Receiving such a proposal from Mr. Darcy -- he who had been so cruel in his manner towards her beloved sister, unfeeling in his treatment of Mr. Wickham, and prideful in his demeanour to everyone around them! -- left her in such a state that she leaned against the pillar and cried for nearly half an hour, mindless of the cold rain that blew all about her. If it were not for the manner of his sentiments, laying out for her in great detail the numerous offences of her family which induced him to dissuade his dearest friend from such a fate, she might perhaps have been induced to exercise more courtesy in her refusal; but the nature of his manner in pointing them out filled her with an anger and distress which had prohibited the slightest hint of civility and did not dissipate with his departure.
She would have remained there for quite some time to simmer in her indignance and injured pride, had it not been for the abrupt cessation of rainfall, and the shocking discovery that the pillar against which she rested had suddenly become a tree of a most unusual kind. Indeed, her very surroundings were all so different, and the shock of it so great, that it was enough to drive all thought of Mr. Darcy straight from her mind.
There was a path before her, well-travelled from the looks of it, and as Elizabeth had never been one to shirk from walking any distance, she picked up her sodden skirts and set upon it that she might discover what had happened to her. If it were not for enormously disastrous conversation that had just taken place, she might perhaps have been more frightened by this sudden change of locale; but just now such a bizzare happenstance was preferable to thinking about what had just transpired.
[ooc: Elizabeth is somewhere near the compound. It would be very wonderful if someone who knows Jane comes across her quite soon before shock wears off and panic sets in. :)
ETA: since Stu found her first, any threads after that will be after Lizzy has already seen Jane and Darcy in comas and gone to the compound to find some dry clothes so she can look after her sister properly!]