Actually I thought your point was to prove the degree of force Darcy needed to employ to successfully represent to Bingley that Jane was not in love with him. Perhaps I misunderstood?

Kathi -- "If he could have found a way to express it in a less offensive way in the letter that was consistant with what he said to Bingley"

"I don't think anything less that an unqualified assurance is going to keep him away from Netherfield and a possible proposal for very long."

Less than. More than. These concepts cannot be measured in any degree without a comparison

If the objective of this paragraph was to prove that Darcy had no choice but to engage in nothing less than making offensive, unqualified assurances that Jane was not in love with Bingley without being asked in order to convince Bingley that Jane was not in love with him I do believe it becomes important to be exact in describing the degree of understanding Bingley has of Jane's love for him. If Bingley does not actually believe that Jane is in love with him the amount of persuasion needed to convince Bingley that Jane is not in love with him, is in fact indifferent to him becomes proportionally diminished.

I do not mean to suggest that you were engaging in deceit in misrepresenting Bingley's understanding of Jane's feelings, I only mean to point out that a little hyperbolye in situations where one party is intent on impressing another party with the value of their representation of events sometimes enters the equation quite unconciously.

](Diane Margaret, you yourself have argued in the past that Bingley would not have been happy married to someone who did not love him. Have you changed that position?)

No indeedy, I still have to agree with Darcy that Bingley would not have been happy married to anyone with feelings that cannot even be described by the recipient as anything better than less than equally affectionate.