Mr Collins raised his eyebrows at the direction of this letter, but no doubt thought his bride would wish to give a full account of the delights Miss Eliza Bennet had spurned, not omitting the attentions flowing from Rosings. Charlotte kept her true motives to herself; still regretting the loss of intimacy between herself and her long-time friend, she was determined to maintain as frequent a correspondence with Lizzy as possible. She depended on the liveliness of her friend’s letters to give her a true picture of events in Hertfordshire, which place loomed larger in her affections than ever before now that she had quit it.

These tasks accomplished, Charlotte took advantage of the few hours of daylight remaining to roam her new demesne with her husband, eager for him to point out every feature of the garden, and the two meadows that ran down towards the river. But first they retreated down the drive so that she could admire her new home in the whole. The house was built from grey stone in an old-fashioned style, with steepled gables and many-paned windows. A gilded weathercock topped a small cupola that perched over the front portico rather like a helmet. Smoke rose arrow-straight from the chimneys into an unclouded sky, suggesting a hard frost the next day.

A thick hedge of laurel bounded the front of the property, which was surrounded by a few acres of garden under cultivation, and a small wilderness that led down to the meadows where their livestock grazed. The thin winter sunshine revealed acres starkly black, white, and grey, with only the bright green of the holly and its blood-drop berries offering any colour. But all was neat, and not without cheer; the paths were lined with box and lavender hedges, hard-pruned and tidy. Charlotte was pleased to see that the vegetable garden, hooped about with cages and trusses silvery in the afternoon light, and with spidery trees pleached to the walls, showed signs of orderly planting and good management. She could do much here.

She was equally interested in the well, byre, and pigsty, the small barn for storing hay, complete with a resident tom to keep mice at bay, and the snug chicken coop behind the house, noting what improvements might be effected little by little.

As dusk drew in, with the chill air nipping at her fingers and face, she was at last ready to retreat indoors, and undertake a more thorough tour of the Parsonage itself. Although the building itself was old, the interior had been modernised, smartened up, and secured against damp and rot first by Sir Lewis de Bourgh and then his widow, with handsome oak stairs, banisters, and panelling on the walls, and fireplaces of stone cladding the older brick. Pocked flagstones still covered the floor in the domestic parts of the building, but the public rooms and bedchambers boasted wood floors, with Turkey rugs creating pools of red and blue.