ally. She could not only
chant his praises when absent, (and there is much in that,) but she
could so manoeuvre as to procure for the captain many a _tete-a-tete_,
which otherwise would not fall to his share. Especially, (and this task
she appeared to accomplish most adroitly,) she could engage to herself
the attentions of his professed and redoubtable rival, Sir Frederic
Beaumantle. In fifty ways she could assist in betraying the citadel from
within, whilst he stood storming at the gates, in open and most
magnanimous warfare. Darcy was not slower than others to suspect the
stratagem, and he thought he saw symptoms of its success. His friend
Griffith had now left him; he had no dispassionate observer to consult,
and his own desponding passion led him to conclude whatever was most
unfavourable to himself. Certainly there was a confidential manner
between Miss Sherwood and these close allies, which seemed to justify
the suspicion alluded to. More than once, when he had joined Miss
Sherwood and the captain, the unpleasant discovery had been forced upon
him, by the sudden pause in their conversation, that he was the _one too
many_.

But jealousy? Oh, no! What had _he_ to do with jealousy? For his part,
he was quite delighted with this new attachment--quite delighted; it
would set at rest for ever the painful controversy so often agitated in
his own breast. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that he felt the
rivalry of Captain Garland in a very different manner from that of Sir
Frederic Beaumantle. The baronet, by virtue of his wealth alone, would
obtain success; and he felt a sort of bitter satisfaction in yielding
Emily to her opulent suitor. She might marry, but she could not love
him; she might be thinking of another, perhaps of her cousin Reginald,
even while she gave her hand to him at the altar. But if the gallant
captain, whose handsome person, and frank and gentlemanly manners,
formed his chief recommendation, were to be the happy man, then must her
affections have been won, and Emily was lost to him utterly. And
then--with the usual logic of the passions, and forgetting the part of
silence and disguise that he had played--he taxed her with levity and
unkindness in so soon preferring the captain to himself. That Emily
should so soon have linked herself with a comparative stranger! It was
not what he should have expected. "At all events," he would thus
conclude his soliloquy, "I am henceforward free--free from her b