When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very minutely to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected,and always very short.Those to her mother contained little else than that they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as made her quite wild;that she had a new gown,or a new parasol,which she would have described more fully,but was obliged to leave off in a violent hurry,as Mrs.Forster called her,and they were going to the camp;and from her correspondence with her sister,there was still less to be learnt―for her letters to Kitty,though rather longer,were much too full of lines under the words to be made public.
Elizabeth,however,had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband.She had always seen it with pain;but respecting his abilities,and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage,nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents;talents,which,rightly used,might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters,even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.