Once Mrs Jenkinson had retired for the night, which she often did early, perpetually felled as she was by the heat and her charge’s generous offerings of laudanum, Anne would venture out to explore, dressed once more as a man. This stratagem had enabled her to visit taverns and other watering-holes of dubious repute, where any queries were met with a hoarse mutter identifying the speaker as an English native unable to converse in French – a necessary pretence to foreclose discovery. Charlotte marvelled at her companion’s boldness, but Anne waved aside her concerns.

‘You would think, Mrs Collins, that this involved risk, that I was placing in jeopardy if not my virtue, my modesty,’ she said, extracting a tin from a pocket and liberating a small cheroot, which, to Charlotte’s amazement, she lit and puffed at. ‘An Englishwoman abroad at night, unaccompanied, in the insalubrious quarters of a foreign city! But not even eavesdropping exposed me to anything really dreadful or dangerous.’

Waving her evil-smelling cheroot, she admitted to curiosity as to what men discussed when the gentler sex was absent. ‘How disappointed I was! I found that they are the dullest of creatures. My understanding of colloquial French might be imperfect, but I heard no exciting tales of striving, exertion, or battle, whether with forces of nature or other men, no accounts of travels and travails, of broader vistas and horizons. Barely even any mention of emperors and empires, the rise and fall of nations. Instead, an endless litany of complaint: against their employers or employees, their fathers or brothers, their spendthrift or sour wives, their ungrateful children. You never heard such – whining. It put me in mind of beagle pups. So there you have the mystery that is men explained, Mrs Collins. Wholly self-absorbed and possessed of a sense of grievance that the rest of the world does not share their sense of self-importance.’

Charlotte, although by now laughing, felt she had to spring to the defence of the stronger sex: ‘Nay, how can you say so, Miss de Bourgh? Think of the good men you yourself know …’ Her voice trailed away as she considered the men of Anne’s acquaintance.

‘Precisely my point. Colonel Fitzwilliam’s charm does not alter the fact that he is entirely self-serving. My cousin Darcy, I would agree, is the very model of moral probity, but he might be more appealing if he were not so very serious and formal in his pursuit of goodness. And I hesitate to speak of your own spouse, Mrs Collins, but even as a partial wife you must own that his greatest virtue is his affection for you and his children. All that is good in his character springs from that source.’

She stopped to peer at Charlotte. ‘Am I too frank? Is my lack of varnish discomforting? I certainly do not mean to draw you into marital disloyalty.’