On the morning of her departure, Mr Collins made Lizzy a lengthy speech on the topic of his marital felicity, with many smiles at his wife. Charlotte had to smile in turn at his confident claim that the pair of them were always of one mind. But she was pleased at the eagerness of Lizzy’s agreement, and to hear her friend’s compliments on her evident contentment.

Charlotte did consider herself content: her husband’s initial attraction to her might have been a matter of invention, but few ardent lovers could subsequently have been more uxorious; and while her husband might not often speak sense, he always spoke kindly – at least to her. He boasted freely of her talents, skills, and amiable nature, a form of complimenting she did not take amiss, and beamed with pride at the smallest scrap of approbation she earned from Lady Catherine. No small amount of self-satisfaction made up his view of his choice of bride, but the crux of it was that he was satisfied, and he made certain that Charlotte – and all who would listen – knew it. He might be fatuous, but he was never cruel, and lacked the wit for sarcasm. Sadly, Charlotte had to consider that she had heard more barbed words fall from Mr Bennet’s tongue in addressing his wife than she was likely to hear in a lifetime of marriage.

Besides, her few months’ tenure as the wife of a clergyman had exposed her to the miserable state of many marriages and families behind cottage doors within their parish. She was learning that it was no small thing to have a husband who did not drink himself into a sodden or sullen stupor at dinner every night, who was neat and fastidious in his person, who did not grab idly at the buttocks of the scullery-maid as she passed in the corridor.

And it was unthinkable that he would ever strike her. At first, Charlotte had been mystified, then horrified, to see the marks of knuckles on the faces of the women to whom her husband ministered, their split lips and blued eyes. But after a few weeks, it was as if a gauzy veil slipped, and her vision adjusted, revealing to her afresh scenes from her life in Meryton – those women of the neighbourhood, high and low alike, who seemed unusually clumsy – whose arms were always gingerly wrapped around their ribs, who limped too often, whose faces bore traces of their many slips and falls.