The interior of Hardwick Hall, an Elizabethan country house in Derbyshire.
THE rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
“And of this place” thought she, “I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt.”
“But no” recollecting herself “that could never be; my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me; I should not have been allowed to invite them.”
This was a lucky recollection — it saved her from something like regret.
Précis
Elizabeth Bennet went on a guided tour of Mr Darcy’s country house while he was away. The elegance of it and what it said about its owner almost made her wish she had accepted his recent marriage proposal, but then she remembered that (or so she believed) he despised her family, and she would have been cut off from them. (60 / 60 words)
