第454页 / 共817页

It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even

for Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy's

proposals. To know that she had the power of revealing what would

so exceedingly astonish Jane, and must, at the same time, so

highly gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet been

able to reason away, was such a temptation to openness as nothing

could have conquered, but the state of indecision in which she

remained as to the extent of what she should communicate, and her

fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into

repeating something of Bingley, which might only grieve her

sister further.

CHAPTER XXXIX.