“When I wrote that letter,”replied Darcy,“I believed myself perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit.”
“I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong an impression.I had not the smallest idea of their being ever felt in such a way.”
“I knew,”said he,“that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter.There was one part especially,the opening of it,which I should dread your having the power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might justly make you hate me.”
“Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take a proper direction.”
“Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?”
“The letter shall certainly be burnt,if you believe it essential to the preservation of my regard;but,though we have both reason to think my opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I hope,quite so easily changed as that implies.”
“My manners must have been in fault,but not intentionally,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 evening?”
“The letter,perhaps,began in bitterness,but it did not end so. The adieu is charity itself.But think no more of the letter.The feelings 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 attending it ought to be forgotten.You must learn some of my philosophy.Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”