Elizabeth looked at her sister for confirmation of this, and Jane replied: "Yes, they are good friends. Kitty seems to enjoy his companionship, and he has evidently a strong liking for her, so that I sometimes feel afraid lest it should develop into anything likely to cause him pain hereafter. But, of course, as I have repeatedly told Bingley, even in view of such a contingency we have no right to betray our knowledge of Kitty's private hopes." As Mr. Morland dined at Desborough, Elizabeth had an opportunity of observing the young people, and she thought she had seldom seen Kitty to greater advantage; her particularly delicate beauty was heightened partly by excitement and partly by the healthful country life. She was at perfect ease, happy with her sisters and Mr. Bingley, and treating Mr. Morland much as she would have treated an elderly friend of the family, not as a man to be captivated. The feeling of frank goodfellowship which he seemed to inspire was a simple and wholesome one, and Elizabeth tried to rest assured that Mr. Morland was aware of Kitty's attitude towards him and wished for nothing more. That, indeed, was the impression he gave; but the longer she was with him, the more clearly she perceived that now his circumstances were more settled a quiet contentment, an evenness of temper, had become habitual to him, without taking away the earnestness, the steadfastness of purpose, which underlay the whole. She felt that she did not yet thoroughly know Mr. Morland; and the following morning, in the course of a brief talk with Kitty, she suggested to her in the gentlest possible way of the desirability of not allowing so excellent a young man, who was also a solitary one, to entertain thoughts of her which might be so much more easily admitted to his mind than expelled from it. Kitty had just been giving wings to her imagination in a description of Mr. Price, which Elizabeth had felt herself hard-hearted to be obliged to check, and the young girl with difficulty came down to earth again to Mr. Morland, to assure Elizabeth, with all haste of indifference, that she was positive that Morland did not think of her in that way; he only cared for his parish and his house, and as for his being solitary--why, his sister Sarah was coming to live with him. Elizabeth was compelled to be content, and, in addition, she secured a promise from Jane that Kitty should come to Pemberley about the middle of September. Kitty was delighted with the arrangement, so long as there was one which secured her return to Desborough for the shooting-party early in November. Her eldest sister exhibited an almost equal amount of eagerness on her behalf to settle this important matter; and Kitty, who had been living in terror lest some cruel fate should intervene to send her back to Longbourn before that time, breathed more freely when her sisters undertook to obtain her father's consent to such a long absence.