And now she was storming homewards, muttering bitter words under her breath. Her brothers, who had no interest or stake in these matters, were free to stay and eat nuncheon and play with the puppies in the stableyard, but she had to hurry home because of some crisis with the day’s baking or brewing. Not for the first time, Charlotte cursed the swingeing unfairness of the lot that made her a woman.

She was too angry to pay attention to the condition of the road, until a puddle that stretched the width of the thoroughfare confronted her with a new problem: in her flight, and in the servant’s confusion, she had left her pattens behind, and was well on the way to ruining her shoes. What had possessed her to wear them instead of her more serviceable boots? And now she would have to go back to Netherfield. She swung round, irritation compounding anger and hastening her steps.

As she passed back down the driveway and slipped past the house, hoping to collect her pattens from the servants via a back entrance, she caught Mrs Bennet’s nasal voice through an open window: ‘I fancy she was wanted about the mince-pies.’ Charlotte experienced that frisson of exposure felt when realising that one is the topic of overheard conversation, and her dismay grew at the words that followed: ‘For my part, Mr Bingley, I always keep servants that can do their own work; my daughters are brought up differently. But the Lucases are very good sorts of girls, I assure you.’

Mr Bingley endeared himself to Charlotte forever with the words, ‘Miss Lucas seems a very pleasant young woman,’ and she relaxed momentarily. But Mrs Bennet was far from done: ‘It is a pity she is not handsome! You must own that she is very plain. Her own mother has often said so, and envied me Jane’s beauty.’

Charlotte’s mouth went dry as Mrs Bennet continued to canvass the topic of her, Charlotte’s, plainness, in the hearing of all the company present. Given that she had no hope of attracting either the admiration of the gentlemen or the friendship of Mr Bingley’s sisters, she found Mrs Bennet’s insistence on her lack of physical charms doubly unkind. The beauty of her own daughters surely made such a stratagem unnecessary.

Her skin crawled with shame as she stood powerless beneath the open window. Still worse, Jenny came bustling round from the back of the house at that moment, clutching Charlotte’s pattens, and found her listening to others speaking of her, always a moment of awkwardness. It was hard to tell which of them was more uncomfortable, and, as they set off on the three-mile walk towards Lucas Lodge, Jenny’s expostulations of ‘Oh, Miss!’ did not help.