第136章[第3页/共3页]

“When I wrote that letter,”replied Darcy,“I believed myself perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit.”

“I knew,”said he,“that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter.There was one part especially,the opening of it,which I should dread your having the power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might justly make you hate me.”

She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually all her former prejudices had been removed.

“The letter,perhaps,began in bitterness,but it did not end so. The adieu is charity itself.But think no more of the letter.The feelings of the person who wrote,and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then,that every unpleasant circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten.You must learn some of my philosophy.Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”