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I put down the pen.

I read it all over, from Be not alarmed to the end. It is eleven pages. It is longer than his.

There is one more line to write. I know what it is. I have known it since the garden.

I do not write it yet.

***

"Engaged! And then not engaged! In the space of a single evening! Lizzy, how could you? How could you?"

Mama has known for four days. She has not stopped saying so for four days. She says it at breakfast and at dinner and on the stairs, and in her room at night with the door open, so that the whole house may hear. Mr. Bingley was sent to tell her the morning after, with the story Mr. Darcy asked for: that it was the lady who had ended it. Mama has taken it exactly as he meant her to. She blames me entirely.

"Ten thousand a year!" she wails now, over the toast. "Pemberley! A house in town! And you sent him away! Like a—like a tinker at the back door!"

"Mama," says Jane.

"Do not Mama me, Jane, you are marrying Mr. Bingley, you have nothing to complain of. Though Heaven knows how you will hold your head up at the church with your sister disgraced. Disgraced, Lizzy! What will Lady Lucas say? She will crow. She will crow like a cockerel on a dungheap." She presses a handkerchief to her eyes. "Oh, my nerves. Oh, Mr. Bennet, how can you sit there?"

Papa turns a page of his newspaper.

"I am sitting here, my dear," he says, "because Lizzy has done nothing whatever to be ashamed of, and I will not have it said otherwise at my breakfast table."

Mama stares at him. So do I.

"Mr. Bennet!"

"Mrs. Bennet." He folds the newspaper, very carefully, and lays it down beside his plate, and looks at her over his spectacles in a way I have very seldom seen him look at her. Not amused. Quite serious. "Our daughter has behaved with more honor than most people manage in a lifetime. When this business is over, you will be very proud of her. Until then, you will leave her be."

There is a long silence.

Mama opens her mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again.

"Well," she says at last, faintly. "Well. I am sure I never said she was not honorable."

And she reaches for the marmalade, and does not say another word about it for the rest of breakfast. Which is the longest she has been silent since Lydia was born.

***

"Send it," says Papa.

We are in the library. I have shown him the letter. I did not mean to; I came in only to borrow his sealing wax, and he looked at my face and held out his hand, and I gave it to him. He has read all eleven pages, slowly, twice, while I stood on the rug. He has not said a word until now.

"No," I say.

He raises his eyebrows.

"If I send it," I say, "he will read it standing in his hall at Pemberley. He will read it once, and fold it up, and put it in a drawer. He will think it is another beautiful thing I have said to him, and he has had enough beautiful things from me." I take a breath. "He did not send his. He could have. He could have had it left at the parsonage with his compliments. Instead he sat up all night and rode out at dawn to put it into my hand himself, because he would not be thought a coward. And he fell, doing it."

"So you mean to take it to him."

"Yes."

"To Derbyshire."

"Yes."

"It is a hundred and fifty miles, Lizzy."