Neither of us informed the Bennets of our decision that morning, for custom dictated that the Lucases ought to hear it first. The family at Longbourn learned the news that evening during a dinner at Lucas Lodge. I wondered if Charlotte had timed her proposal to me with that dinner in mind.

The announcement came after we had removed to the drawing room. The fire burned higher than strictly necessary, as if Sir William had ordered it built up for celebration. The room had that quality of determined festivity that comes when a family wishes to mark an occasion they are not entirely certain how to feel about. Mrs. Bennet had positioned herself near enough to one of the other guests to suggest intimate conversation, though her voice normally carried with vigor. Jane sat near her mother with her customary composure, making gentle attempts to redirect the conversation that her mother showed no signs of heeding. Elizabeth had taken a chair by the window, as far from her mother as the room’s dimensions permitted. Charlotte stood near her mother, composed and still, while I positioned myself at what I judged to be an appropriate distance for a newly engaged man: close enough to suggest attachment, far enough to suggest proper restraint.

Sir William made the announcement with the warmth of a man determined to carry the thing off well. There were congratulations. There were the requisite expressions of pleasure and surprise, some more convincing than others. And then Mrs. Bennet began to speak.

Mrs. Bennet’s response to the news occupied approximately forty minutes and covered, in no particular order: her own nerves, the ingratitude of daughters who had been given every opportunity and contrived to waste them, the continuing injustice of the entail which had not been resolved and which remained, she wished everyone to understand, a source of ongoing suffering, Lady Catherine de Bourgh who was by reputation a difficult woman and one hoped Miss Lucas had considered this carefully, and the nerves again. Elizabeth, I gathered, had refused a perfectly good offer that morning and would live to regret it. Mary had sat in the corner and done nothing useful with her opportunities, which was entirely characteristic. Lydia and Kitty were dining with the Phillipses in Meryton, and so managed to escape opprobrium. At least, Mrs. Bennet observed with a volume that had now entirely abandoned any pretense of discretion, Jane would soon be settled at Netherfield, and what a comfort that was to a mother’s nerves. Her voice, which had begun as something approaching a murmur, had achieved its natural volume by the time she reached her second mention of the entail.

I sat through this with the expression of a man too overcome with happiness to attend very closely to anything, which required perhaps a twentieth of my attention, leaving the remainder free for the room.

Charlotte sat beside her mother with the composure of a woman who has made a decision and has no intention of revisiting it. She accepted congratulations with a pleasant smile and said the right things in the right order and did not look at me more than courtesy required, which was correct. We were, for the purposes of everyone in this room, exactly what we appeared to be: a clergyman and a neighbor’s daughter who had arrived at a sensible arrangement. The performance required nothing from either of us that we were not already equipped to give.

The room had rearranged itself in the manner these things do. Mrs. Bennet remained near the fire, still addressing her audience with undiminished energy. Jane had abandoned her attempts at redirection and crossed to the window, where Charlotte had joined her for what appeared to be a quiet exchange of congratulations. Elizabeth had moved to a corner with Maria, apparently determined to occupy herself with something other than her mother’s performance. The younger Miss Lucas looked grateful for the attention.

Sir William found me near the center of the room and pumped my hand with warmth that required a response in kind. He said several things about the happiness of fathers and the rewards of virtue, the precise content of which I did not retain. His eyes, above the warmth of his expression, were doing something more careful. He was assessing me with the residual instincts of a man who had spent twenty years determining who could be trusted with what, and he was doing it through the medium of a congratulatory handshake.

I gave him my most earnest and grateful expression and held his hand a moment longer than necessary and let him look.

His grip tightened fractionally, then relaxed. Not suspicion resolved, but a calculation completed. I watched him arrive at whatever conclusion he had been working toward.

I think he had guessed what I was, or Charlotte had told him, and he was unsure whether he wanted his daughter to marry into that profession. Whatever misgivings he had would have been overridden by his wife, who was at present beaming triumphantly at Mrs. Bennet.

He decided, apparently, that I was satisfactory. His expression settled into something that was not quite relief and he moved away to accept a glass from a passing tray.

Elizabeth sat by the window.

I had been aware of her since entering the room, in the way one is aware of the element in a situation that requires the most careful management. She was looking at Charlotte with an expression that had in it, I thought, both genuine affection and a question she had not yet found the form to ask.

Charlotte had not told her. Of course Charlotte had not told her. Charlotte had spent the past several days watching me and deciding what to do about what she saw, and she had not told her closest friend any part of it, which meant she had judged Elizabeth’s reaction an uncontrollable variable. Charlotte loved her friend but it seemed that she was not under any illusions about her.

I watched Elizabeth look at Charlotte, and I watched Charlotte receive the look with that pleasant, composed smile, and then I understood what I saw in Elizabeth’s face.

She was hurt. Quietly, controllably, in the manner of a person who has no intention of showing it, but hurt nonetheless. Her closest friend had accepted an offer from a man Elizabeth had refused that same morning without, apparently, a word of prior confidence. From Elizabeth’s position, this had the quality of a small betrayal. She would not call it that. She would find a reasonable explanation and accept it and be generous about it because she was, whatever else she was, genuinely fond of Charlotte. But the hurt was there.

I had not planned for this and I found, with some irritation, that I did not like it.

There was nothing to be done about it. Charlotte had made her plans and it had not included Elizabeth’s feelings in the final accounting, and that was Charlotte’s business and none of mine. I had no cause to feel anything about Elizabeth Bennet’s quiet hurt at a window. She had refused me cleanly, as arranged, and the morning had gone as planned, and what she felt about her friend’s subsequent decision was entirely outside my area of responsibility.

I felt something about it anyway and set it aside with more effort than usual. I reminded myself that what compassion I could muster was better aimed at my little flock than at any daughter of the gentry.

Mr. Bennet had not come to Lucas Lodge, but had stayed in his own library.

When I returned to Longbourn, I knocked at the library door.

A pause. Then: “Come.”

The library was a comfortable room of moderate size, its shelves neither sparse nor crowded. The books were arranged with the casualness of a man who knew where everything was without requiring system. Classical authors dominated one section, well-thumbed volumes positioned within easy reach of the desk. I recognized Marcus Aurelius among them, which told me something about how Mr. Bennet had arrived at his philosophy of life. I had read them all, though Mr. Collins of Hunsford was not the sort of clergyman one expected to have done so. The usual accumulation of a gentleman’s library filled the remaining space, some volumes inherited, some acquired, all suggesting a reader rather than a collector. A chair of decent quality sat angled toward the window for light. The desk showed evidence of actual employment: estate papers, a pen that had been recently used, an open ledger. The door was solid oak and fit its frame well enough to muffle the sounds of the household to a distant murmur. Mr. Bennet had built himself a refuge, not a monument, and he had chosen his philosophical companions with care.

Mr. Bennet was at his desk with a book open before him that he was not reading. He looked at me over his spectacles with the expression of a man who has been expecting a certain visitor and has prepared accordingly.

“Mr. Collins. I understand congratulations are in order.”

“You are very good, sir,” I said, with the warmth of a man sensible of a neighbor’s condescension. “I confess I had not anticipated — that is, the happy resolution of this morning’s — Miss Lucas has done me a very great —”

“Yes. I imagine she has.”

He regarded me for a moment. I regarded him. Outside, through the closed door, Mrs. Bennet’s voice rose and fell in what appeared to be a fresh iteration of the entail’s continuing injustices. I thought I heard a polite murmur from Jane.

“You are not quite what you seem,” Mr. Bennet said, in the tone of a man conducting an experiment. He paused. “Are you, cousin?”

I arranged my expression into polite bewilderment. “I am sure I do not quite take your meaning, sir — that is, I hope I am always what I seem, for Lady Catherine herself has observed that a clergyman’s character ought to be —”

“I am sure that your character is just what your patroness would wish it to be,” said Mr. Bennet in a curt tone, and cut me off when I attempted to thank him for the compliment. “You are a puzzle, Mr. Collins, and potentially a problem. Fortunately, my wife did not manage to dragoon any of our daughters into marrying you, so you have not become my problem.”

I tried to make an appropriately bewildered protest, but he cut me off again.

“I hope you will be good to her. Charlotte Lucas is a sensible girl. Rather too sensible for what this neighborhood has to offer.”

“I believe that Miss Lucas is entirely capable of ensuring that she is well treated.”

Mr. Bennet looked at me with interest for precisely two seconds.

Then he smiled, the small private smile of a man who has found the answer he was looking for and intends to keep it entirely to himself.

“I believe you are right. Shut the door on your way out, if you please.”

I shut the door. There was a great deal to manage before I could bring Charlotte to Kent.