“Once the house was within sight, she quite reasonably pointed out that it would make sense to call and make the acquaintance of my relations while we were here, rather than come back again later. Miss de Bourgh is just like her esteemed mother in that respect,” he added with a sycophantic smile in her direction. “Always making sensible suggestions that will save others bother.”
Miss de Bourgh inclined her head at the compliment, apparently unaware that the only person she had saved from bother was herself.
“And is the neighbourhood to your liking?” Elizabeth enquired.
Miss de Bourgh glanced in her direction, her top lip puckered in a way that suggested it was not, and said, “It is very quaint.” She then swivelled her head back to continue peering at Jane.
“We understand from Mr Collins that Rosings Park is very grand,” Jane said. “It must be very different here from what you are used to at home.”
“It is.”
“Yes, well,” said Mrs Bennet peevishly, “a man of Sir William’s preponderance will always make a house feel smaller than it is. If only, Mr Collins, you had held to your previous arrangement and stayed at Longbourn, Miss de Bourgh would certainly have felt more at home.”
“Madam, please! One cannotbeginto compare Longbourn to Rosings Park!” Mr Collins blustered, looking with alarm at Miss de Bourgh as though the momentary lapse of veneration might cause her physical harm.
“It will do well enough for you when Mr Bennet dies, I should wager,” Mrs Bennet murmured.
“Mr Collins, have you and Charlotte set a date for the wedding yet?” Elizabeth enquired.
“No, not as yet, although we hope it will be early in the New Ye?—”
“Have you been presented at court?”
Everybody paused to look at Miss de Bourgh, who had thrown out this interjection with no preamble and was still staring with uncommon penetration at Jane.
“No, madam, I have not,” Jane answered.
“None of my girls has been presented at court, and none of them is worse off for it,” said Mrs Bennet.
“I wish you had told me this was your real opinion sooner, my dear,” said her husband. “I should have wasted far less of my time concocting excuses not to go to London.”
“And do you play?” Miss de Bourgh enquired, ignoring them both and continuing to look only at Jane.
“I used to play the pianoforte, but it is many years since I conceded that my ambition did not match my ability. I prefer to listen to my sisters play.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs Bennet. “Mary is particularly talented. Mary, open the instrument and play us that pretty little air you were practising this morning.”
Mary did as she was asked, though she might as well have walked the mile to Meryton and played the tune on her Aunt Philips’s pianoforte for all the notice Miss de Bourgh paid her, persevering instead with her questions to Jane.
“Do you draw?”
“Not with any degree of proficiency,” Jane answered with a sweet, unassuming laugh.
“But you dance, I am told.”
“Indeed—and take great pleasure in it.”
Elizabeth wondered at the sincerity of Jane’s smile. She herself was bristling at such an insolent inquisition by a lady whose ill health had, according to Mr Collins, prevented her from making progress inanyaccomplishments of note.
“Do you have much opportunity to dance at Rosings?” Elizabeth asked in an attempt to draw the conversation away from her sister.
Miss de Bourgh looked rather alarmed to have been thus addressed, but Mrs Jenkinson soon leapt to her defence.
“Miss de Bourgh’s health does not permit her to engage in rigorous activity. We generally pursue gentler diversions.”
“Such as playing and drawing?” Elizabeth asked.
Miss de Bourgh looked at her with a mixture of alarm and annoyance for a second or two and then she coughed—a breathy, extravagant exhalation that sent her companion into a frenzy of cushion plumping, shawl tightening, and brow soothing.
