Jane Austen
His attentions to
Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and hatefully mercenary; and the
mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness
to grasp at anything. 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 shown. Every
lingering 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 anything
that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust--anything that spoke him of irreligious or
annaabi.ee 
