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“I am sorry Jane, I did not want to make you feel guilty. It is for the best. You know that feeling in the morning when you throw off the blankets, especially in the Spring when the weather does not know what it is doing. The sun is warmer than expected and you end up overwarm. When you throw the blankets off that weight disappears. Coming to London feels the same, but I did not know that I had this weight of blankets on me.”

Jane looked confused, not following the somewhat tortured analogy.

“What I am trying to say, badly, is that there is the sense of throwing off a weight that you know is there. That is what I meant by the blankets. What I am feeling is the sense of throwing off a weight that I did not know was there. I am not upset, I am not disappointed, rather I feel free.”

“It was that bad?”

“Again, I did not think so until I took a stand. As soon as I demanded to be treated properly, the new Miss Bennet of the neighbourhood, I was banished here.”

“You are sure you are banished?”

“Uncle Gardiner is now my guardian. He asked for it when he came to collect me. Mr. Bennet signed the papers, appointing him as my permanent guardian.”

It was a forced smile.

“I was Miss Bennet for all of a week. Mary has the title now.”

“How is she?”

“The first letter was nothing but a trial run to see if our method of communication works.”

“What do you mean?”

“I write a letter which Uncle Gardiner includes in his own to Uncle Philips. He hands it to Mary, with our aunt knowing nothing about it. Mary is going to reverse this, handing her own letter to Uncle Philips and he will include it in his own letter to Uncle Gardiner.”

“Why not send it directly to Longbourn? And why the secrecy from Aunt Philips?”

The forced smile became a grimace.

“We want to keep it secret from Mrs. Bennet, and we know she will think nothing of opening Mary’s mail. And neither of us trust our aunt to keep it secret from her sister. What our parents do not know about, they cannot make a fuss about?”

The whole thing was being facilitated by their two uncles, it was well within the bounds of propriety. But it graphically highlighted the schism within the Bennet family.