Pride and Prejudice Volume 2, Chapter 2

A few days after Mr. Collins leaves again, Elizabeth's aunt and uncle, Mrs. Gardiner and Mr. Gardiner, bring their children and come to visit for Christmas. Mrs. Gardiner, a more sensible woman than Mrs. Bennet, is close to Elizabeth and Jane. Knowing of Jane's disappointment in Bingley, Mrs. Gardiner invites Jane to go home with them to London. Jane accepts the offer. SHe insists that Bingley is not to blame for harming her, in fact no one is. She is disappointed because of her own expectations that he cared for her, which she thinks may have been imagined on her part. She says, "It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does." Volume 2, Chapter 2, pg. 94 Despite her statement, Jane seems to secretly hope that she will see Bingley and his sisters while she is in London, but Elizabeth doesn't expect that Bingley will visit Jane because she is sure that Darcy will prevent it. She also believes that Bingley's back-stabbing sisters will drop their acquaintance with Jane once she is in town.

While the Gardiners are at Longbourn, Mrs. Gardiner meets Wickham and talks with him about Pemberley, Darcy's estate. Wickham tells the story again of how Darcy mistreated him, and Mrs. Gardiner believes it to be true because when she lived in Derbyshire, not far from Pemberley, she remembers hearing that Darcy, unlike his beloved father, was a selfish, spoiled young man.