“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.
“Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”
“Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it.”
“Oh, certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and, besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy; “and to all she must yet add something more substantial in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowing _only_ six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing _any_.”
“Are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility of all this?”
“_I_ never saw such a woman. _I_ never saw such capacity, and taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe, united.”
Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice of her implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward. As all conversation was thereby at an end, Elizabeth soon afterwards left the room.