Mr. Darcy knew well that Georgiana had neither the natural volubility nor the confidence which must attend her situation in life, without which her natural diffidence would render the demands of her position as mistress of Pemberley inordinately arduous when those duties became her own. Her brother understood that Georgiana’s quiet, private nature belied an excellent understanding, a sweet, patient temper, and an affectionate heart. However, the difficulties that must necessarily arise in a world that judges hastily made him sensible, also, that she must acquire the easy manners she did not naturally possess, and so arranged to send her to Mrs. Fortesque’s establishment in London, where emphasis was laid on the acquisition of those graces considered indispensible to the well-bred lady of fashion and taste. Mrs. Fortesque was a kindly, motherly woman who—most unusually for one in her line of business—wished her charges not only accomplished, but also happy. Accordingly, upon her understanding that her new pupil’s sadness could not be entirely attributed to her history but was, to some degree, due to her recent separation from her beloved companion, on the next return journey following a convenient holiday, Mademoiselle Blanche became the newest inmate at Mrs. Fortesque’s establishment, to Georgiana’s immediate improvement of spirits and the other girls’ delight.

Georgiana’s progress under Mrs. Fortesque’s tutelage was productive toward the attainment of that ease and accomplishment anticipated by her brother, and happier than she herself had reason to expect. Miss Darcy returned to Pemberley, after her time away, with a quiet grace and an extraordinary range of accomplishments, including a prodigious talent for music. Mr. Darcy had occasion to congratulate himself on his choice of establishments, as Georgiana’s mastery of the piano-forte and her naturally charming voice had added something to her confidence, as well as her qualifications for her post.

Such was the life of Miss Georgiana Darcy from age five to fifteen, when a disappointment of the most dreadful kind occurred. George Wickham was the son of her late father’s steward, raised at Pemberley, and given an education through the generosity of the late Mr. Darcy. When the young Wickham was not away at school, his holidays were perforce spent at Pemberley. As a consequence of having little else to do, the attention he shewed to the young Georgiana following the loss of her parents established him firmly in her affections. Wickham, a man of her brother’s age and a favourite of her own father, had been artful and dissembling as a young man, and was become idle, insinuating, and unprincipled as a grown man. He followed Georgiana to Ramsgate in the summer of her fifteenth year, in fresh resentment over the present Mr. Darcy’s refusal to furnish him with additional funds to squander in idleness and dissipation.