‘How you upbraided me, and rightly so, for my conduct that night. I was so blind, so stubborn! And Mr Collins! How he talked and talked that evening!’ Lizzy glanced sideways at her friend, to see if she was perhaps stretching the bounds of marital loyalty too far, but Charlotte was still smiling. ‘Such a flood of words, and almost all of them “Lady Catherine this” and “Rosings that”. Truly, Charlotte,’ she said more earnestly, ‘you were kinder to us both – to us all that night – than we deserved. So young and foolish we were. And I the most foolish of all.’

‘Nonsense, Eliza! Everyone was foolish that night. Never before in the history of balls did so many conspire to act as simpletons. Anyone would have thought we were competing with one another for a grand prize in foolishness. It is as your father always says: “We live to make sport for our neighbours.”’

This led to the exchange of news concerning their Meryton fellows, in whom Mrs Darcy maintained a lively interest. The Bennets’ Aunt Phillips had recently put Mrs Bennet’s nose out of joint by accidentally annexing a young clergyman who had taken up a living nearby, and sending him in the direction of Charlotte’s sister Maria. The mistress of Longbourn had considered that he would do very well for her daughter Mary, but Aunt Phillips had by mischance sent her husband to invite the newcomer to a supper party at her home the same night Mary was kept from attending by a sore throat; she had compounded this error by carelessly inviting Maria to be present and, in a trice, the damage was done. Both Charlotte and Lizzy were able to laugh heartily at this tale, of which each had heard sufficient partial accounts to piece together a whole. Time, loss, and, in Elizabeth’s case, elevation, had softened their awkwardness on the topic of clerical courtships as they pertained to the Bennet and Lucas families.

‘Mary cares not a jot, however,’ Lizzy explained. ‘She is in raptures because she is at last an Author; she wrote an improving book, of mottoes and strictures and deep thoughts, and she would have no peace, nor give anyone in her family peace, unless it were published. My father sent it to Mr Cadell, a publisher in London, but he declined by return of post. I must confess I used my influence with my husband, and he sent the manuscript to another publisher with a note he signed himself. This time, it was accepted. Mary was paid eighty-five pounds for it! And has been beside herself with joy and pride ever since. I am surprised she has not yet sent you a copy. Her friends and family have all been importuned to buy the work.’

Charlotte murmured an enquiry about Lizzy’s two youngest sisters.

‘Oh, Lydia!’ Mrs Darcy laughed, then sighed. ‘I swear, she is incorrigible.’