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of less importance even as a common flirt than she has been

here. The officers will find women better worth their notice.

Let us hope, therefore, that her being there may teach her

her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow many

degrees worse, without authorising us to lock her up for the

rest of her life.'

With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but

her own opinion continued the same, and she left him dis-

appointed and sorry. It was not in her nature, however,

to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was

confident of having performed her duty; and to fret over

unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part

of her disposition.

Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her

conference with her father, their indignation would hardly

have found expression in their united volubility. In Lydia's

imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility

of earthly happiness. She saw, with the creative eye of

fancy, the streets of that gay bathing-place covered with

officers. She saw herself the object of attention to tens and

to scores of them at present unknown. She saw all the

glories of the camp: its tents stretched forth in beauteous

uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and

dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she saw her-

self seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six

officers at once.

Had she known that her sister sought to tear her from

such prospects and such realities as these, what would have

been her sensations? They could have been understood only

by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same. Lydia's

going to Brighton was all that consoled her for the melan-

choly conviction of her husband's never intending to go there

himself.

But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and

their raptures continued, with little intermission, to the very

day of Lydia's leaving home.

Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time.

Having been frequently in company with him since her re-

turn, agitation was pretty well over; the agitations of former

partiality entirely so. She had even learnt to detect, in the

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