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Then I turn the page, and he begins on Mr. Wickham.

I read it once quickly, as though it might bite. Then I read it again.

The living. The three thousand pounds. The debts. The dissipation. His life was a life of idleness and dissipation. All of it set down plainly, without flourish, the way one writes an account for a steward.

And then Ramsgate.

Miss Darcy. Fifteen years old. Persuaded she was in love. An elopement planned. Thirty thousand pounds. A brother arriving a day or two before, by chance. A girl who could not bear to grieve and offend him, and so told him everything.

This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together, he writes. And then, as though it costs him something to set it down: I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he has imposed on you.

I put the letter down on my knee.

Mr. Wickham, at Mrs. Philips's, with his open face and his easy voice. I have no right to give my opinion, he said, and then gave it for an hour. How readily I believed him. How I wanted to believe him, because he was charming and Mr. Darcy was not, because he admired me and Mr. Darcy had said I was only tolerable.

He told his story to me, a stranger, on our first evening's acquaintance. He told it to all Meryton the moment Mr. Darcy was gone from Netherfield.

And Mr. Darcy told no one. Not even to clear his own name. He told no one this, about his own sister, until last night, at midnight, in a letter to a woman who had just called him the last man in the world.

"Oh," I say aloud. It comes out very small. "Oh, no."

I read the last lines.

I will only add, God bless you.

I sit very still in Lady Catherine's breakfast parlor, with mud on my skirt and his letter on my knee.

I have prided myself all my life on my discernment. Papa calls me his clever one. I laughed at Jane for thinking well of everyone. I despised Charlotte, a little, for marrying where she did not love. I thought I saw through Mr. Darcy at a glance, at an assembly, in the space of a single insult.

I did not see through anyone at all.

"How despicably I have acted," I whisper. "I, who have prided myself on my discernment. I, who have valued myself on my abilities."

The clock on the mantel ticks. It is a much grander clock than Charlotte's. It ticks much more disapprovingly.

"Till this moment," I tell it, "I never knew myself."

***

The door opens, and I fold the letter so fast I nearly tear it.

It is only the Colonel. He comes in and shuts the door and stands looking at me, and I realize too late that my face must be wet.

"He has fallen asleep," he says quietly. "In the middle of a sentence. He was asking whether you had eaten anything." He pauses. "Miss Bennet. Forgive me. But I do not think you came down here to compose yourself for joy."

I could lie. I am very tired, and he is very kind, and it would be easy.

I have been wrong about enough this morning.

"Colonel," I say. "Mr. Darcy and I are not engaged."

He blinks.

"He came to the parsonage last night," I go on, before I lose my nerve. "While you were all at tea. He made me an offer. And I refused him."

The Colonel says nothing at all. He pulls out the chair opposite and sits down in it, rather suddenly, as though his knees have made the decision for him.

"You refused him," he says at last.