“I am sure,”said she,“I cried for two days together when Colonel Miller's regiment went away. I thought I should have broken my heart.”
“Good Heaven!what is to become of us?What are we to do?”would they often exclaim in the bitterness of woe.“How can you be smiling so,Lizzy?”
In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable,and Jane to make her resigned.As for Elizabeth herself,this invitation was so far from exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she considered it as the death warrant of all possibility of common sense for the latter;and detestable as such a step must make her were it known,she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her go.She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general behaviour,the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of such a woman as Mrs. Forster,and the probability of her being yet more imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must be greater than at home.He heard her attentively,and then said:
“I am sure I shall break mine,”said Lydia.
“A little sea-bathing would set me up forever.”
“Lydia will never be easy until she has exposed herself in some public place or other,and we can never expect her to do it with so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present circumstances.”