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indifference. He had before believed her to return his affection with sincere if not with equal regard. But Bingley has great natural modesty with a stronger dependence on my judgment than on his own. To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself was no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment. I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister’s being in town. I knew it myself as it was known to Miss Bingley, but her brother is even yet ignorant of it. That they might have met without ill consequence is perhaps probable, but his regard did not appear to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger. Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me; it is done, however, and it was done for the best. On this subject I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister’s feelings, it was unknowingly done, and though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them.
    She could not read of Mr. Darcy’s belief of her sister’s indifference nor of his lack of regret for what he had done without being roused to anger, but again a perplexity of emotions tore at such a simple explanation. As she read and re-read this passage, she unwillingly came to a realization of his accurate appraisal of the lack of propriety of most of her family. It was mortifying to be forced to agree with any part of what he alleged, but as she remembered the wild behaviour of her two youngest sisters, Lydia and Kitty, as well as her mother’s boasts that she expected Jane to soon be well settled at Netherfield, honesty forced her to acknowledge that Mr. Darcy simply related the bald truth—especially when his statements were buttressed by his account of his association with Mr. Wickham.
    With respect to that other, more weighty accusation of having injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his connection with my family. Of what he has particularly accused me I am ignorant, but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of undoubted veracity.
    Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many years the management of all the Pemberley estates and whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his godson, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at school and afterwards at Cambridge—most important assistance as his own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give him a gentleman’s education. My father was not only fond of this young man’s society, whose manners were always engaging, he had also the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different manner. The vicious propensities—the want of principle, which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr. Darcy could not have. Here again I shall give you pain—to what degree you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character; it adds even another motive.
    Elizabeth remembered the first time she read this passage and how it inflamed her anger at his insufferable conceit. However, repeated readings of the