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“Yes,” she said, casting her mind back to the story. “She explains that she is settling for Mr. Collins.”

“I do not agree with that characterization—‘settling.’ She says, ‘I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.’”

“You’ve learned it by heart.”

“Miss Brown, that scene is etched onto the very muscle you speak of.” He paused. “I had no idea novels could do that. I had no idea novels could be true.”

How curious. Diantha agreed with the sentiment, which he articulated so beautifully, but she found the passage in question an odd inspiration for it.

“Of course,” he went on, “I know novels are not true, strictly speaking. They are fancies, products of the mind. One might even call them lies.”

“If they are lies, they are true lies.”

“You understand.”

“Yes. But I am not sure I understand the truth of the particular passage you are quoting. You will forgive me, but how can one not interpret it as being about Charlotte settling for less than she deserves?”

“Because I am not interpreting it to be strictly about marriage. I wasn’t, perhaps, a natural for the life in the Church I was pursuing, but Harcourt was going to give me a living.”

“Ah, I see. You would have lived on the grounds of Mollybrook.”

“Yes.”

“You would have been proximate to your friends.”

“Friends I consider family.”

She supposed what he was leaving unsaid was that such a plan would also mean an escape from his difficult mother.

“So,” he continued, “like Charlotte Lucas, I would not have considered it settling. It was a kind of happiness, a not-insignificant happiness, that was within my grasp.”

“How strange to think that had life unfolded as you’d planned, we would have met each other frequently at Mollybrook.” Not that the dowager had ever attended church with any frequency, but they did meet the vicar from time to time.

“Meeting you at Mollybrook would have been another reward for following that path,” he said, as if paying her such a compliment were nothing. She didn’t know what to say and feared she was blushing. She gave thanks for the darkness.

“I see what you’re doing,” he said.

What was she doing? “I beg your pardon?”

“I am meant to be questioning you, and we’ve gotten quite distracted.”

“All right,” she said, no longer so wary of his inquiries.

He examined her for a long moment before he spoke. “You were determined that Mr. Hill could be rebuffed by virtue of your becoming ineligible to be a wife. But you would’ve preferred ruination than marriage to someone else, someone suitable, is what you’re saying?”

“I suppose I am.”

“You are a remarkable woman, Miss Brown.”

“But it wouldn’t have been ruination in the sense you mean, would it? I am no longer of society the way you are, or, more properly, the way the women you know are. If my reputation had been ruined, it wouldn’t have mattered, not really. So what I was calling ruination would merely have been escape.”

“But you are no longer in search of such ruination? Or such escape?”

She didn’t say no, because of course that wasn’t true. She tried to redirect the conversation. “We have been forgetting to look for the comet.”

“Miss Brown, may I ask, had Mr. Hill not entered the picture, what had you been planning to do once … You will forgive my indelicacy, but once Lady Harcourt no longer requires your services?”

So much for the comet. It seemed the questioning was to continue. “I had been saving diligently.”