“I—I am fine, dear cousin. You must not regard me. It is just that there was such a crush of people on the street. I am having a little trouble breathing, that is all. Pray, continue.” Georgiana looked all the more unable to continue herself. Her face was positively ashen, and her hands were cold and trembling. Colonel Fitzwilliam instinctively drew near to her, and put his arm around her shoulders to save her from collapsing entirely. Georgiana pulled away, desperate to understand the actual evil before her, rather than endure the constant mischief of her own imagination. She might not be able to adjust her own ideas to endure his news without pain, but, she reasoned, at least she would know what that pain was, the sooner the better to find her way to whatever remnant of her happiness remained.

“And Lady Hallendale?”

“Yes, yes—we all are well. Georgiana—”

“You are blessed, indeed, to find such a one. There is certainly no good in these events, but the comforts to be conferred by such a woman are a great blessing. It bodes well for your future happiness that you are so sanguine as to her value. Will Mrs. Darcy and my brother have the honour of receiving her—I mean meeting her—in Park Place to-day?”

“Meeting?” asked the Colonel in some confusion, but then impatiently continued, “No, I think not to-day—too much to do—attending my father—to-morrow.” Here he turned to Georgiana, and attempted to take her shaking hands with the hand not already employed; Georgiana resisted but little, her small store of remaining strength and composure having long been exhausted. However, she was still ignorant of the true progress of her cousin’s understanding with Miss Crawford, and persisted weakly, but valiantly, to obtain confirmation of the desolation before her.

She was, by this time, forced to rely for her very sustenance on the belief that his brotherly partiality for her would remain to the extent—even in the glow of his present happiness—that he could still feel a disinterested sympathy for her unhappiness, even in the hopelessness and the absurdity of its cause. He would—she could barely reason—even now not wish to see her suffer. “And—am I to—” Georgiana forced herself to continue, adding almost inaudibly, “to wish you joy?—Miss Crawford,” and, choaking on the last words—if it were possible—was become even more colourless than before, and seemed about to succumb at any moment.