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A long dispute followed this declaration; but Mr. Bennet was

firm: it soon led to another; and Mrs. Bennet found, with

amazement and horror, that her husband would not advance a guinea

to buy clothes for his daughter. He protested that she should

receive from him no mark of affection whatever on the occasion.

Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend it. That his anger could be

carried to such a point of inconceivable resentment as to refuse

his daughter a privilege, without which her marriage would

scarcely seem valid, exceeded all that she could believe

possible. She was more alive to the disgrace, which her want of

new clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any

sense of shame at her eloping and living with Wickham a fortnight

before they took place.