The writing implements acquired, Lady Catherine began to speak again, and Mary hurriedly scribbled down what she said. Elizabeth’s eye caught Mr. Darcy’s again and he had a sardonic curl to his lip that suggested he thought little of the sensibility of his own aunt.
Silly creatures all, but Elizabeth felt quite prepared at present to love all silly creatures.
As for Miss de Bourgh—a small mousy thing.
Elizabeth detected neither beauty, nor spirit, nor cleverness.
If, as widely believed, the purpose of a young woman is to be beautiful and captivating, Miss de Bourgh was as much of a failure in that task as Elizabeth herself had ever contrived to be.
Up close, in the drawing room, shelostsignificance rather than gaining it.
Miss de Bourgh querulously demanded to be covered with a blanket. She fretted about whether the screens were placed too close or too far from the already unseasonable fire, and Mrs. Jenkinson attended on her most closely. There seemed to be no connection between her and Mr. Darcy. He seldom looked towards Miss de Bourgh, and then chiefly only if his aunt called his attention to her. In fact, had Elizabeth not been told by both Mr. Wickham and Mr. Collins that they were to be married, she would think Mr. Darcy to be utterly indifferent to his fair cousin.
The servant soon arrived to announce dinner, and they proceeded into the dining room, interrupting Lady Catherine’s dominating conversation.
During the course of the dinner, Elizabeth found that she drew Lady Catherine’s attention often. There was that same frown on the great lady’s face each time.
This surprised Elizabeth because she did not think that there was anything atpresentamiss with her appearance. The image she had seen in the mirror was one of a mostly ordinary gentlewoman. Perhaps it was that the style of her hair that she adopted from her mother’s portrait had become outmoded over the past fifteen years.
Maybe Lady Catherine had the same sort of maternal feeling that Mrs. Bennet did, and she hated to see anyone outshine her daughter.
Yet the way Lady Catherine insisted that Miss de Bourgh’s birth made her automatically the equal, nay the better, of any maiden in the kingdom made Elizabeth suspect that this wasnotin fact one of her Ladyship’s vices.
Nay virtues, for Elizabeth was obliged always by gratitude to think Mrs. Bennet virtuous.
Miss de Bourgh and Mr. Darcy had been seated together, but despite that they barely spoke. However, Mr. Darcy looked frequently in Elizabeth’s own direction.
Even though they were too separated to easily converse, Elizabeth felt a warm sense that the gentleman had not forgotten their friendship. While they had barely spoken so far this evening, he seemed less awkward than he had the previous day when he called at Hunsford Parsonage.
He was a man who often preferred to be quiet, and he often required encouragement to feel comfortable enough to speak easily. Mr. Darcy had said many times that he found itdifficult to converse with strangers. They were not strangers, but they had been separated for nearly six months.
The arrangement of seats placed Elizabeth next to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and he made some effort to charm her with his conversation. She quickly found herself at ease with him. They spoke freely and with plenty of laughter. Though, on occasion, the recollection intruded that he was the son of an earl, and thus too far above her for Elizabeth to have any real right to speak with him on easy terms.
She felt herself often caught between two types of “Elizabeth”: The quiet, ill-dressed girl, who never spoke out of turn—except when alone with Mr. Bennet—and a charming, sparkling young Miss, beautiful enough to gain the attention of any gentleman, though not beautiful enough, the way that Jane was, to demand their unwilling submission.
I never want to again be the way I have always been at home.
That thought, mixed with simmering anger towards either Mrs. Bennet or herself, or maybe even Mr. Bennet, would erupt at the strangest moments. Like when she caught Mr. Darcy looking at her again with admiration.
Near the end of the dinner, Lady Catherine’s repeated attention towards Elizabeth turned into an inquisition. Her Ladyship went so far as to move her chair closer to Elizabeth’s, making Mr. Collins switch positions, and then she began with: “I hear that you are a penniless relation of Mrs. Collins’s father. You are a prettyish thing. But who were your mother’s people? What relations do you have beyond the Bennets.”
Elizabeth shrugged.
This was a question she was seldom asked, as no one in the vicinity of Meryton ever had any particular curiosity to know more than the general story. Or more, what curiosity theyhad, had been satisfied by Mr. Bennet fifteen years ago when Elizabeth was too young to speak on the matter.
Mr. Darcy had once asked, and Elizabeth had likewise been unable to satisfy him.
“Do answer me,” Lady Catherine insisted, “There can be no shame in telling me of your connections, even if they are low, it is always best to own them.”
“I do not know, madam.”
“Do not know!” Lady Catherine pressed her lips together. She stared at Elizabeth again, as if searching something out in her face. Then she said, “Do not be absurd. I have never heard such a thing. You mean to say that you do not know every detail of the family history, or the details of all of their deeds, and that the connection with your mother’s people has been wholly severed, but at the very least you can tell me what your mother’s family name was, and what county she hailed from.”
Elizabeth felt something like the vertigo she’d feel when looking down from the window of a particularly high tower.
She didnotknow.
All she knew about her mother was from a few cryptic hints Mr. Bennet had dropped.
