Indeed, engagement had only sharpened her sense of moral superiority. She and Mr. Collins seemed to nourish one another’s most ponderous tendencies. Their conversations, conducted at a volume just sufficient to be overheard, were laden with references to duty, propriety, and the lamentable decline of spiritual discipline in modern society.
Even Mr. Bennet had ceased to find amusement in it.
Elizabeth did her best to avoid them. The rain, however, rendered retreat difficult.
On more than one occasion, Mary contrived to position herself beside Elizabeth and remark, in tones of grave concern, upon the dangers of heresy and the peril of associating too freely with those of unsound doctrine.
Elizabeth bore it in silence.
It required significant effort.
A note arrived at last from Netherfield—though not the carriage she had hoped for.
Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy requested, with proper apology, the honor of the first dances at the forthcoming ball, regretting that the state of the roads prevented their making the request in person.
Elizabeth’s reply was composed with measured calm. An affirmative was dispatched without delay.
She would have preferred to deliver it herself.
The days that followed stretched intolerably.
She retreated often to her father’s study, where she played chess against him in near silence or sat with a volume open before her, pretending to read while her thoughts wandered toward Netherfield.
She read, too, with new purpose.
A Bible lay frequently upon her lap, alongside a small collection of tracts she had borrowed discreetly from Mr. Harding. She studied passages she had never examined closely before. She compared arguments. She sought understanding rather than ammunition.
Mary noticed.
“I am glad,” she observed one damp afternoon, peering over Elizabeth’s shoulder, “that you are at last applying yourself to serious reading.”
Elizabeth closed the book slowly.
“I have always read seriously,” she replied evenly.
Mary nodded, satisfied with her own interpretation. “It is well. One must guard against false doctrines.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened briefly upon the page.
For a fleeting, wicked moment, she longed to inform her sister precisely which doctrines she was examining—and for what purpose.
She did not.
Instead, she inclined her head and returned to her reading.
The rain persisted.
And with each sodden morning, Elizabeth found her patience thinning.
She did not doubt her decision.
She doubted only the waiting.
If the ball would not arrive sooner, she thought, she might very well dissolve entirely into impatience before it did.
∞∞∞
The rain, though miserable in its persistence, had afforded Darcy one unexpected mercy.
