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She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without

daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them

to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the

door. Jane looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate than

Elizabeth had expected. On the gentlemen's appearing, her colour

increased; yet she received them with tolerable ease, and with a

propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of

resentment, or any unnecessary complaisance.

Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and

sat down again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not

often command. She had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He

looked serious as usual; and, she thought, more as he had been

used to look in Hertfordshire, than as she had seen him at

Pemberley. But, perhaps, he could not in her mother's presence be

what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but not

an improbable, conjecture.