In the wake of the failure of the illustrious Almack’s to produce a suitor, Lady Catherine resorted to the desperate expedient of securing tickets for the less-fashionable, but well-attended, Argyll Rooms. Auguring no success even in this inferior quarter, Lady Catherine had written to the Chamberlain (where the credentials of her own family had been sufficient), and procured Anne an audience in that drawing-room which would secure their entrance to the unfashionable court balls, but, alas, to no avail. At the court balls, the reigning lights were not those who comprised the ton, but those of merely superior pretentions to birth, title, and unblemished respectability. The supplication to the tribunal of Almack’s had at least been of a temporary nature; the widow of a mere knight, or even the daughter of an Earl, was of minor consequence at court, and every attendance was a trial for Lady Catherine’s ideas of her own consequence. She had the collateral mortification of seeing Anne slighted in favour of young ladies with only the claims of birth, and as much beauty as bright eyes, a smiling face, and the attraction of a general wish to please and be pleased, is generally comprised.

CHAP. 8.

AT LONG LAST, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s regiment was returned from the Continent. It had been above two years since he had last secured leave, and he spent his few weeks’ leisure in Derbyshire. Colonel Fitzwilliam had, therefore, not paid his annual visit to Rosings for several years, as was long his custom. These visits were necessarily not so pleasant as formerly, occurring now, as they must, without Darcy’s companionship. By an implicit mutual understanding, the Colonel’s company without Mr. Darcy was not so agreeable to Lady Catherine, so his visits had been correspondingly shortened in duration, following the Darcys’ marriage. As he had long been in the habit of attending upon his aunt each year, the Colonel’s honourable nature would not admit of a complete amendment arising solely from a loss of pleasure to himself. Accordingly, he went to Rosings at an early opportunity with the conviction that a labour sooner undertaken is a labour sooner done.