Darcy looked impenetrably grave, and handed the folio packet to him with the briefest of explanations: “Lady Catherine, may I present to you Mr. Sidney Parker. Mr. Parker and I are partners in some speculations of a not dissimilar nature to the one in which you are invested. I have asked him here to give us his opinion on the merits of the scheme from a mechanical and scientifical perspective. He is eminently qualified to make such an evaluation; I am not.”

Darcy and his aunt waited silently for Mr. Parker to speak. When he did, after looking through the papers for only one or two minutes, and shuffling back and forth between several sheets of complicated diagrams, he continued to look at the papers and cried,

“This is madness! For God’s sake, Darcy, tell me that you have not ventured any or all of your considerable fortune with this madman… this charlatan!”

“No, Parker, I have not, but my aunt, Lady Catherine, has become significantly involved in the venture. In fact, Lady Catherine has invested the entirety of her ready fortune in this scheme. Do I take it by your last pronouncement that you are not sanguine of its success?”

“Success! I could not so much as imagine the possibility, if you told me that the creator of this apparatus were the great Watt himself!”

Recollecting Lady Catherine and pausing to adjust the flow of his ideas to be of a more civil nature, or at least more comprehensible to Lady Catherine, he continued in a slower and milder tone:

“Madam, I have no idea how this gentleman has imposed upon you, but I give you my most steadfast assurance that this scheme is wholly impractical from the point of view of œconomy, or even common sense.”

“But, the drawings…,” began Lady Catherine, “I have seen the steam-lights myself, in the foundry at Telford. They produced a strange, but quite agreeable blue light… “

“That they would, Madam,” replied Mr. Parker. “You say that you saw these installed in a foundry?”

“Yes, near Telford. I travelled thither myself to inspect the apparatus and view it in operation. A Mr. Wainwright’s foundry—Mr. Roberts had installed his steam-lights in Mr. Wainwright’s foundry.” Lady Catherine looked deathly pale, and appeared in some confusion of mind. Darcy suggested that she might be more comfortable if she were to rest, and leave the discussion to himself and Mr. Parker, but Lady Catherine would remain to hear what Mr. Parker had to say.

“A foundry, Madam,” he said, nodding to Lady Catherine, and turning to Darcy, “Sir, is quite a noisy place, is it not?” Lady Catherine agreed, and added that the factory was heard well before it could be seen.

“And these steam-lights, how large were they?”

Lady Catherine indicated, “The light-globes were about the size of a band-box, only, of course, of a spherical proportion.”