“I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that knows him,”replied the other.Elizabeth thought this was going pretty far;and she listened with increasing astonishment as the housekeeper added,“I have never known a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old.”
Mr.and Mrs.Gardiner smiled.Elizabeth could not help saying,“It is very much to his credit,I am sure,that you should think so.”
Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Darcy's delight, when she should enter the room.“And this is always the way with him,”she added.“Whatever can give his sister any pleasure is sure to be done in a moment.There is nothing he would not do for her.”
“In what an amiable light does this place him!”thought Elizabeth.
This was praise,of all others most extraordinary,most opposite to her ideas.That he was not a good-tempered man had been her firmest opinion.Her keenest attention was awakened;she longed to hear more,and was grateful to her uncle for saying:
“This fine account of him,”whispered her aunt as they walked,“is not quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend.”
“His father was an excellent man,”said Mrs.Gardiner.
In the gallery there were many family portraits,but they could have little to fix the attention of a stranger.Elizabeth walked in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her.At last it arrested her―and she beheld a striking resemblance to Mr. Darcy,with such a smile over the face as she remembered to have sometimes seen when he looked at her.She stood several minutes before the picture,in earnest contemplation,and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery. Mrs. Reynolds informed them that it had been taken in his father's lifetime.