A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration…

The exchange takes place in Volume I, chapter 6 of Pride and Prejudice, at a party given by Sir William Lucas. Sir William has just tried to make Darcy dance with Elizabeth Bennet, who refused with an arch look. Caroline Bingley comes up to Darcy, sure that he is bored by the company, and invites him to mock it. He answers that his mind was “more agreeably engaged”, dwelling on the pleasure of “a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman”: those of Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Astonished, Miss Bingley asks when she is to wish him joy.

Darcy replies with this line: he knew she would ask. Miss Bingley takes her revenge in jokes about the “charming mother-in-law” who will always be at Pemberley with him; he listens with perfect indifference, and her wit flows on.

The joke turns against Darcy. Not long before, at a ball, he had judged Elizabeth only “tolerable”; by the end of the novel, published in 1813, he will marry her.

Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, chapter 6 (Mr Darcy), 1813

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