Chapter 50 293
" Haye Park might do ," said she , " if the Gouldings could quit it--or the great house at Stoke , if the drawing-room were larger ; but Ashworth is too far off ! I could not bear to have her ten miles from me ; and as for Pulvis Lodge , the attics are dreadful ."
Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption while the servants remained . But when they had withdrawn , he said to her : " Mrs . Bennet , before you take any or all of these houses for your son and daughter , let us come to a right understanding . Into one house in this neighbourhood they shall never have admittance . I will not encourage the impudence of either , by receiving them at Longbourn ."
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 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 .
Elizabeth was now most heartily sorry that she had , from the distress of the moment , been led to make Mr . Darcy acquainted with their fears for her sister ; for since her marriage would so shortly give the proper termination to the elopement , they might hope to conceal its unfavourable beginning from all those who were not immediately on the spot .
She had no fear of its spreading farther through his means . There were few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended ; but , at the same time , there was no one whose knowledge of a sister ' s frailty would have mortified her so much--not , however , from any fear of disadvantage from it individually to herself , for , at any rate , there seemed a gulf impassable between them . Had Lydia ' s marriage been concluded on