Anne once again spoke with uncanny prescience: ‘We require fresh blood, Mrs Collins. Look at me, a grown woman in a girl’s body, neither fish nor fowl, the only living child of my parents after three stillborn sons. No wonder my mother kept me at home, as if in a hothouse like this one in which we stand. And look at her, so determined to control destiny in spite of being a woman, so hardened in her insistence on caste and rank that she is unable to acknowledge what she sees, what she must see: that I am the end of the de Bourgh line. Unlike my mother, I am pragmatic. I know enough of horse breeding to know that it is time for new stock, a good hardy graft that will enable our family tree to continue branching.’

Charlotte pecked at another seed, and caught up a word: ‘Longbourn?’

‘I understand you,’ said Anne. ‘If you bring forth a son, your family’s need to look around for protection falls away, as he will eventually inherit Longbourn, a goodly estate. He will not be rich after his father dies, but he will be comfortable and, if he is clever, also respectable. By that token, his sisters should enjoy the same benefits.

‘My intention is not to lay temptation before you. I know you are prudent, but you are not a grasping woman. My wish is that yours would be a rational, impartial decision; only secondarily, if you like, a gift to me. Your son would be happy and respectable as master of Longbourn; or he could be all those things, but also possessed of the wealth and power that would come with the Rosings inheritance. He would have the security of not one, but two estates to call his own. One would hope that he would freely house and support his elder sisters – he would certainly have the means to do so. But he would not need such wealth. Longbourn alone should provide for him, and them.’

Charlotte stumbled out her next sentence: ‘But why then settle money on the girls?’

‘Would you have them reliant on fraternal affection or obligation alone? Vulnerable to the whims of a future sister-in-law? Edged aside by the cares and needs of an expanding family?’

Charlotte was silent, remembering her brothers’ yells of delight when the news of Mr Collins’s proposal was broken to their family, the open joy with which they celebrated her no longer being their charge and burden should she remain an old maid. ‘I understand, Miss de Bourgh. You want for my daughters what I have only dreamed of for them: the dignity of independence. Believe me, for that alone, I shall be eternally indebted to you.’