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"I flatter myself it was a very well-turned letter. I compared the alliance to the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster." He beams. "Mrs. Bennet will have been most gratified."

"She fainted," I say. "Onto Mary."

"There!" says Mr. Collins, delighted. "Most gratified."

***

There is another letter under Jane's. I did not see it at first. It has been sealed with a great deal of wax, in a hurry, slightly crooked, and the direction is written in a hand I know too well.

I look at it for a long moment.

"Is that from your mother?" Charlotte asks.

"Yes."

"Are you going to open it?"

"I am considering whether I have the constitution."

Charlotte holds out her hand. "Give it to me. I shall read it aloud. If you faint, you may faint onto Maria."

I give it to her. She breaks the seal and unfolds it, and her eyebrows climb steadily up her forehead as she reads the first lines to herself.

"Well?" I say.

"It begins," says Charlotte, "Lizzy, Lizzy, Lizzy. There are eleven Lizzies. I have counted them. The twelfth is underlined twice."

Maria giggles.

"Go on."

Charlotte clears her throat. "Ten thousand a year! And very likely more! Oh, my dear, dear Lizzy, I always said you were the cleverest of my girls, I always said so, ask anyone, ask your father. What pin money you will have! What jewels! What carriages! A house in town, and all the rest! Jane's is nothing to it, nothing at all. Mr. Bingley has only five thousand." Charlotte pauses. "She has underlined only."

I put my head in my hands.

"I have told your Aunt Philips," Charlotte reads on, inexorably, "and she has told Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Long has told everyone. And I made a point of calling at Lucas Lodge, my love, for Lady Lucas has been so very insufferable since Charlotte married, and you should have seen her face. Green, Lizzy. Green as a goose's egg."

Charlotte stops reading. She lowers the letter. Her face is perfectly composed.

"That would be my mother," she says.

"Oh, Charlotte. I am so sorry."

"Do not be. Mama has been insufferable since I married. Your mother is perfectly right." She raises the letter again. "And my father will have heard it from my mother, which means he will have told everyone at St. James's on his next visit to court. Sir William tells everyone at St. James's everything. The Prince Regent probably knows by now."

"Charlotte!"

"Lydia says," Charlotte continues, "that you must make Mr. Darcy give a ball at Pemberley, and invite all the officers. Kitty says the same. Mary says that marriage is a solemn estate and not to be entered into lightly, which I thought very ill-natured of her. Your father says nothing at all, but he laughed for a quarter of an hour when Mr. Collins's letter was read, and I do not know what he can have found so amusing."

I go cold.

Papa.

I told Papa in October that I would rather marry a toad than Mr. Darcy. I told him in some detail. I compared Mr. Darcy to several kinds of toad, in descending order of disagreeableness. Papa enjoyed it very much.

He laughed for a quarter of an hour.

He knows. He does not know what he knows, but he knows something, and he is sitting in his library at Longbourn turning it over with that particular expression he wears when he is reading a very good book and has guessed the ending.