To Elizabeth, Lady Anne appeared tall and angular, with a startling impression of resemblance to Lady Catherine. Upon a closer study of the face, Elizabeth could perceive a kindness and a gentleness that would never have occurred to the latter. Her hair was darker than Lady Catherine’s, and she had the same gray-blue eyes; however, in Lady Catherine’s face, those eyes had a cold, steely look about them, but in Lady Anne’s visage, they were a soft sky colour, and added to the warmth of their neighbouring cheeks and lips. She was also dressed for the out-of-doors, in a gown of pale blue silk, and a straw bonnet decorated with a few small blossoms about the crown, and affixed to her head with long blue ribbands. She carried a basket of flowers and—to Elizabeth’s initial astonishment, fruits and vegetables!—with an air of elegance and pleasure. This was a partnership, indeed! How far removed from Lady Catherine’s useless officiousness! Mr. Darcy’s mother was, judging from the accessoires de portrait she had chosen, evidently wishing to be remembered as her husband’s pendant, in art and in life: useful, elegant, and noble, but with a feminine softness that at once made her seem kind and congenial. Elizabeth reflected on the blessings of such a mother, so different from her own; no, there would be no scenes of embarrassment to her children, no want of sense and propriety which could draw her husband’s scorn. There was nothing in the portrait to bespeak anything but what Elizabeth could readily have imagined of Mr. Darcy’s mother.

“I wonder what she would have thought of me. Would she have felt as Lady Catherine—that I am a stain on the family honour and respectability? When my portrait is here, will my own likeness portray me as her equal? Will I be thought kind? Frivolous?” mused Elizabeth. She shook off such unusual apprehensions of self-doubt with her customary cheerfulness—no, she would require no such exertions on the part of the portrait-painter; no, nothing other than capturing her own, remarkably fine eyes.

CHAP. 11.