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And when you have given your ball,” she added, “I shall insist on their giving one also. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not.”
    Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Elizabeth returned instantly to Jane, worrying over the remarks Miss Bingley and Mr. Darcy would share regarding her relations’ behaviour, for she did not believe that the kind incarnation of the former was the genuine article. Caroline, however, like her brother, could not be prevailed upon to join in any censure of the Bennets, in spite of Mr. Darcy’s attempted witticisms on fine eyes .

Chapter Ten
    T HE DAY PASSED MUCH AS THE DAY BEFORE had done. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley had spent some hours of the morning with the invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing-room. The loo-table, however, did not reappear. Mr. Darcy was writing, and Miss Bingley, seated near him, was reading a book and attending to the progress of his letter. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.
    Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in attending to what passed between Caroline and her companion.
    “You write uncommonly fast. You must be writing to a favorite connection.”
    “You are mistaken, I write rather slowly. And I am writing to Georgiana, as I have already told you.”
    “Again? This is the third in as many days. What a devoted brother!”
    To this he made no answer.
    “Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.”
    “I have already told her so once, by your desire.”
    “Oh, it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”
    “They are generally long; but whether always charming, it is not for me to determine.”
    “It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”
    “That will not do for a compliment to Darcy,” said her brother, “because he does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?”
    “My style of writing is, admittedly, very different from yours.”
    “Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable,” said Caroline, directing her comments to Elizabeth. “He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”
    “My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them—by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”
    “Your humility, Mr. Bingley,” said Elizabeth, “must disarm reproof.”
    “Nothing is more deceitful,” announced Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes, indeed, an indirect boast.”
    “And which of the two do you call my little piece of modesty?” asked Bingley.
    “An indirect boast,” replied his friend promptly; “for you are proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of compliment to yourself—and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?”
    “Nay,” said Bingley, “this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon my honour, I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I believe it at this moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless precipitance merely to show off before the ladies.”
    “I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mounting your