Elizabeth inclined her head slightly. “If Mr. Darcy did not think them an obstacle, they can be nothing to you.”
“Insolent girl. Men may be blinded by preference…”
“Lady Catherine,” Darcy said, firmly now, “that is enough.”
But she would not stop just yet. “You do not shrink from advancing yourself.”
“I advance myself by nothing,” Elizabeth returned. “I accept what is offered, and no more.”
Lady Catherine turned back at once to Darcy.
“You see?” she said. “You hear how she speaks – without reserve, without proper deference, without any sense of the distinction which ought to guide her.”
“I hear only that she speaks honestly,” Darcy replied.
“And you admire it?”
“I do.”
Lady Catherine drew a breath.
“Then you are determined,” she said, more slowly now. “Determined to disregard the claims of your family, the expectations of your name, and the engagement – long understood, if not formally declared – which has always existed between you and my daughter.”
Darcy’s expression did not change, but something in it hardened. “No such engagement has ever existed, except in expectation,” he said. “It was formed without my consent, and it will not be fulfilled.”
Lady Catherine’s composure wavered – only for a moment, but unmistakably. “You cannot mean to say…”
“I mean to say,” he interrupted, “that I will not sacrifice my own happiness, nor that of another, to satisfy an arrangement I never sanctioned.”
There was a silence.
“You could have Rosings. You would be a fool to relinquish it.”
A longer one.
When she spoke again, her voice was lower, but no less firm. “You have changed.”
“Yes.”
“I scarcely recognise you.”
“That may be so.”
“And you attribute this change…” she said, with a pointed glance toward Elizabeth, “…to this acquaintance?”
“I attribute it,” Darcy said after a brief pause, “to wanting joy in my life, and… this lady having touched my heart.”
Elizabeth could no longer pretend indifference. She looked up at him; and Darcy, turning slightly, met her eyes with a smile.
Lady Catherine watched them closely. “You sentimental fool. And you suppose,” she said at last, “that this… discovery entitles you to overturn every expectation that has governed your life?”
“No,” he said. “But it obliges me not to persist in error.” He kept looking at Elizabeth.
Another pause.
Then, with renewed force, “I will not consent to it.”
Darcy met her gaze. “I did not ask for your consent. I am master of my own conduct – and answerable only for it.”
