‘I cannot comprehend the enormity of your loss, my dearest Charlotte,’ she said. ‘To lose a beloved child, and a son, not yet four years old! It is too cruel, no matter how much reason – and indeed the teachings of your husband, and the convictions of mine – may attempt to console or soothe.’

She paused and wrung her hands. With the detached part of her brain, Charlotte registered that she had never seen her friend do such a thing before. Elizabeth went on, ‘I do not mean to burden you. That would be unfeeling, a piece of unkindness. But I must impose on our friendship, your patience, and good heart, even at such a time. I miscarried a few months ago. The baby was a boy.’

Charlotte raised her head, surprised and yet not surprised, uncertain what to say. Lizzy burst out, ‘It is the second child I have lost in these past three years. Charlotte, forgive me – while I cannot pretend to understand what it must be to have a living, breathing child perish, how my own losses gnaw at me!’

Now the brilliance of Elizabeth’s eyes owed something to the tears that trembled in them. ‘It has been a shock – a ruinous shock – to realise how ill-prepared I was for marriage. How ill-prepared both Mr Darcy and I were. We believed our regard for each other had been tested, that it had grown to overcome all that stood in our way – the distinctions between us, the differences in our temper, his pride, my hasty prejudice. He had done so much for me, my family. His love was in no doubt, and the strength of my feelings matched his. There was nothing, I thought, that we could not discuss, could not face together. I was a fool.’

She sat down at last on the sofa next to her friend, and said, ‘I did not see the truth that stared me in the face: a great man, from a great family, marries for one reason primarily: to beget heirs. Neither of us gave this any thought. We believed that children, a son – or two or three – would present themselves as if by magic. But it has been five and a half years, and there is still no infant in the nursery. I walk through the chambers of that great house, knowing myself to be the envy of many who do not consider me fit for the office of being its mistress. And I pass beneath the eyes of all those portraits, those Darcy ancestors, all witness to my failure, watching me break the chain.’

Charlotte murmured the necessary words of hope and encouragement, or at least she tried to, but Lizzy went on: ‘I live in terror of one of the stone-faced doctors who attend me opining that there can be no more children, or attempts to bear one. If that happens, Charlotte, I swear I shall jump off the Pemberley bridge.’