Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

"Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?" said she. "Yes--if Darcy does not put it off again. But I am at his disposal. He arranges the business just as he pleases."

I love this moment for what it is hiding: the fact that Darcy keeps delaying his scheduled departure from his aunt’s estate at Rosings because he is such a hot mess right now over Elizabeth. This is, after all, a man usually so outwardly composed that he refuses to engage in even the most minimal niceties of conversation, let alone dancing, unless it pleases him. Along with all the recent “accidental” stalking of Elizabeth on her morning walks about the estate, this passage is the hidden tip-off that Darcy is close to becoming fully at the mercy of his overwhelming physical passion for Elizabeth. Nothing says romance more than the breaking of plans—or a man, so used to being in control, losing any and all sense of it.