His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most incautiously shewn.

Everylingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that, proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance -- an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways -- seen any thing that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust -- any thing that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits. That among his own connections he was esteemed and valued -- that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling.