“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well”

The expression “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well” becomes a pointed record of how Tessa once saw Hardin: not simply as someone she disliked, but as someone whose character seemed to confirm her distrust of appearances. When Hardin rediscovers the passage in her marked copy of Pride and Prejudice, the old judgment lands in the present, where their efforts to repair the relationship are still strained by confusion, secrecy, and unequal expectations.

The passage in the marked book

Hardin finds the passage while Tessa is asleep beside him. He has taken the copy of Pride and Prejudice she gave him and is reading the sections she marked in bright yellow. The passage continues: “The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.” Its movement from limited affection to disappointment in human character makes it more than a general observation: in Hardin’s recollection, it belongs to the history of their own relationship.

The book’s annotations also prompt him to remember Tessa in her dorm room, sitting on her small bed with a highlighter and novel. He recognizes the passage as one she marked in their earlier days and reflects that the annotations reveal a pattern: she had despised him then. Reading it beside her sleeping form gives the old judgment a peculiar intimacy. The words remain on the page, but Hardin encounters them as evidence of the distance between the person Tessa once thought him to be and the person with whom she is now trying to find a way forward.

Distrust carried into the present

The passage’s suspicion of appearances resonates with the couple’s later difficulty communicating what they feel. Tessa asks Hardin to open up so she can know how he feels, but he answers that she is just as closed off. She initially denies this; then, confronted with his point that she keeps saying she is finished with him while remaining with him, she recognizes that her thoughts have been jumbled and unspoken. She names her confusion as being about their relationship and his betrayal, and the conversation leaves her close to tears.

That exchange gives the quotation’s concern with inconsistent character a relational counterpart. Neither person can rely on declarations alone: Tessa’s words that she is done sit beside her continued presence, while Hardin’s claims that he is trying must contend with the hurt that makes her doubt him. The novel passage does not resolve that contradiction. Instead, Hardin’s act of reading it turns an old mark of Tessa’s disapproval into a lens on the unfinished work of understanding one another.

Judgment, security, and listening

In another argument, Tessa explains that the problem extends beyond Hardin’s lie. She says she does not feel that she comes first, that he has left her out of decisions about their future, and that his dismissal of her concerns about marriage made her feel unheard. She clarifies that she does want marriage someday, though not soon, because she needs security; she also points to his having been drunk and staying out all night with another woman. Hardin acknowledges that she is right, while admitting that he does not know what to do about it.

Her account complicates any simple reading of the passage as merely an old insult. Tessa’s distrust is connected to specific choices and omissions, not just to a fixed opinion of Hardin’s nature. The marked lines about the unreliable appearance of merit therefore echo a live question in their relationship: whether intentions and efforts can be trusted when actions have repeatedly left her feeling disregarded.

From accusation to an appeal

The birthday misunderstanding offers a brief contrast to the earlier pattern. Hardin asks Tessa to listen, and she surprises him by sitting on the bed and remaining silent. He admits to himself that he does not know how to begin because he had not expected her to listen. After explaining that he did not know she was waiting for him or had made a cake, he asks where they go from there and says that the repeated back-and-forth is wearing him down.

The shift does not erase the distrust preserved in Tessa’s annotations or settle the questions raised in their other arguments. It does, however, place the remembered passage beside a moment when listening becomes possible: the old judgment of inconsistent character meets an uncertain attempt to explain rather than assume. The quotation’s significance lies in that tension. It recalls the sharpness of Tessa’s earlier view while showing why, in their present, neither appearance nor accusation alone can establish whether they can rely on each other.