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"Do not tell me I am mistaken," says Charlotte. "I am very seldom mistaken. It is the only interesting thing about me."

I shut it again.

We walk on. A blackbird runs ahead of us along the edge of the grass, stops, cocks its head, runs on.

"He apologized to me today," I say at last. "For the Meryton assembly. For calling me tolerable."

"He remembered that?"

"I reminded him. I did not mean to. It slipped out." I look down at the gravel. "He went white, Charlotte. White as he was in the lane. He said he had been a fool and a liar and a boor. He said I had been the handsomest woman in every room he had ever seen me in."

Charlotte is quiet.

"And the worst of it is," I say, "he meant it. Every word. I have heard men pay compliments. Mr. Wickham paid them by the yard. This was not a compliment. This was a man telling the truth because he could not bear not to." My voice wobbles. "And it is the same man. That is what I cannot get past. It is the same man who wrote the letter. It is exactly the same man."

"Did you think it would be a different one?"

"I thought—" I stop. "I thought the letter was the truth he wrote when he was angry. I thought perhaps he could only be honest when he was hurt. I thought the man on the walks was the blow to his head talking. Pettigrew says it may make him odd."

"And now?"

"And now I think the man on the walks is what he is when he is not afraid." I look at her. "He told me he learned to be correct instead of easy. He said it was a good deal colder. He was right. I mistook the cold for the man."

Charlotte says nothing for a long moment. Then she stops on the path and turns to face me, and her face is not teasing at all.

"Lizzy," she says. "Do you love him?"

The blackbird flies up from the grass with a clatter.

"I do not know," I say. And then, because it is Charlotte, and I have never been able to lie to her for longer than an afternoon: "I am afraid so."

Charlotte looks at me with great kindness and no surprise whatsoever.

"Well," she says, and tucks her arm through mine, and walks on. "That is going to make dinner very awkward."

***

Dinner is very awkward.

Mr. Collins will not look at me. He looks at the soup. He looks at the mutton. He looks at the saltcellar for a full minute together, as though it has done something to offend him. When he must address me, he addresses a point some six inches above my left ear.

"Cousin Elizabeth," he says to the point. "Would you be so good as to pass the bread?"

I pass the bread.

"Thank you," he says to the bread.

Maria, who knows nothing, looks from one of us to the other with growing delight.

"Mr. Collins," says Charlotte pleasantly. "How did the sermon go this morning? You were composing it in the shrubbery, I think."

Mr. Collins chokes on his bread.

"The sermon," he says, when Maria has finished thumping him, "is not yet complete. I was—interrupted. The shrubbery is not as conducive to thought as I had believed. There are a great many birds."

"Birds," says Charlotte.

"A great many. Of all kinds." He turns pink. "I have decided to compose in the book room in future. Indoors. Where one can see what is coming."