“Nearly three weeks.”
“And you saw him frequently?”
“Yes, almost every day.”
“His manners are very different from his cousin’s.”
“Yes, very different; but I think Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance.”
“Indeed!” cried Wickham, with a look which did not escape her. “And pray may I ask--” but checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, “Is it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add aught of civility to his ordinary style? for I dare not hope,” he continued, in a lower and more serious tone, “that he is improved in essentials.”
“Oh, no!” said Elizabeth. “In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.”
While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to rejoice over her words or to distrust their meaning. There was a something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive and anxious attention, while she added,--
“When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that either his mind or manners were in a state of improvement; but that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.”
Wickham’s alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated look; for a few minutes he was silent; till, shaking off his embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the gentlest of accents,--