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He has put his spectacles back on. He is not smiling. He is looking at me with the face he wore when I was ill with scarlet fever at twelve, and he sat up with me three nights together and read me Gulliver's Travels in all the voices.

"I am going to ask you a question," he says. "And I want a true answer. Not a clever one. You have been very clever this last month, I think, and it has not done you much good."

"Yes, Papa."

"Never mind what you said at Hunsford. Never mind what he does not remember. Never mind your mother, or Mr. Collins, or the House of Lancaster." He leans forward and folds his hands on the blotter. "Do you want it to be true?"

The clock ticks.

I have been asked this before, in a way. Charlotte asked me if I loved him, walking home across the park, and I said I was afraid so. Anne asked me in the carriage, and I could not answer at all.

But nobody has asked me this. Whether I want it. Whether, if I could reach out and take the lie and turn it true in my hands, I would.

I have not let myself ask it. Every night at the parsonage, rereading his letter, I have asked myself everything else. Whether I love him. Whether he will forgive me. Whether he will remember. I have never once let myself ask whether I would marry him, if it were real, because I have been so afraid of the answer.

I am not afraid of it now. I find, sitting in Papa's library with the gold light going across the rug, that I have known it for some time.

"Yes," I say.

It comes out quite quietly. It does not shake. It is the simplest word I know, and I have never said it, not once, not to Charlotte or Anne or Jane or the ceiling of the parsonage bedroom, and now that it is out, it sits in the room between Papa and me, perfectly calm, as though it has been waiting there all along for me to notice it.

"Yes," I say again, and this time my voice does shake. "Yes, Papa. I want it to be true. More than I have ever wanted anything."

Papa looks at me for a very long time.

Then he takes off his spectacles again, and rubs his eyes, and when he puts them back on I see that the corners of his eyes are wet, and that he is trying very hard to look as though they are not.

"Well," he says. "That is a relief. I should not have liked to give you to a toad."

I laugh again, and this time it is not half a sob at all.

"I could not have parted with you, Lizzy," he says, more gravely, "to anyone less worthy. I want you to know that. I would have refused him myself, had you not wanted him. Ten thousand a year notwithstanding. Your mother would never have forgiven me, but I should have done it."

"I know, Papa."

"But you do want him."

"I do."

"And he wants you, God help him, with his head cracked or without it." Papa sighs, and leans back, and looks up at the ceiling as though he expects to find instructions written there. "Then you are in a very great pickle, my dear. And I do not know how you will get out of it."

"Nor do I."

"You must tell him. Before you marry him. Not after."

"I know."

"The moment that apothecary's letter comes."

"I know, Papa."

"And it will be very bad."

"I know."

"Good." He looks back down at me. "Then that is settled. You will tell him the truth when you may, and he will either forgive you or he will not, and either way, my dear, you will have done what is right, and we shall have a great deal of very good material for the rest of our lives."

He pulls a sheet of paper toward him across the desk and uncaps the ink.