The Curious Case of the Kentish Clergyman, Chapter 4. Narrated by Elizabeth Bennet Darcy.

The distance I had walked was the first thing Netherfield wished to settle about me — before my name was well out of the footman's mouth, and a good while before anyone thought to mention my sister.

"It cannot be less than five miles," said Mr. Bingley, who would always grant a thing its largest reading if the largest reading were the kinder one.

"It is only three," I said.

"Three and a half." This was Mr. Darcy, from near the window, where he had been standing with no apparent intention of joining anything. "You came by the south field. The clay there takes that colour only after heavy rain, and there is burdock at the stile by the second hedge — the burrs on your hem are from it. The footpath by the road would have added the half mile and spared you both. You chose speed, comparatively speaking, over comfort."

"Your knowledge of the country, sir, is impressive on so short an acquaintance."

"Elementary," he said. "Bingley showed me the whole of the property when he came to look it over. A man remembers the ground he has walked."

He said it as a plain fact, the way another man might tell you the time, with no notion that he had done anything to be remarked, and went back to his window.

The ladies of the house then took their turn at the subject. "Three miles and a half," said Miss Bingley, restoring the half mile to me as though it were a debt of honour, "and quite alone! You are an excellent walker, Miss Eliza. I could never be persuaded to it myself."

"That I believe," I said.

"And in such dirt." Mrs. Hurst's eyes went down my petticoat and made a remarkably thorough audit for a woman who appeared to be looking at my face. Six inches of Hertfordshire hung on that hem, and I knew to the inch how much, because the two of them weighed it between them all the while their mouths were being kind. How dreadful the roads. How brave I was. How fortunate that nobody of consequence had seen me climbing stiles.

"It shows an affection for your sister that is very pleasing," said Mr. Bingley, who had heard the words and missed the music, as he reliably did when the music was unkind. He said a thing very like it again not five minutes later, in case anyone had missed it the first time, and then led me upstairs as far as the landing, giving orders for hot water and declaring that I must stay until Jane was well — his sisters would be delighted. His sisters declared themselves delighted, a half-second after the cue.

I had been prepared, climbing that stile, to be sneered at, and I had an answer ready for a sneer. I had none ready for the window. Mr. Bingley had defended me, warmly, visibly, twice, and any soul in the room could have named what he was doing. Mr. Darcy had told the room that I had walked three and a half hard miles for my sister and had the mud to prove it — but his defence wore the dress of arithmetic, and I was in no humour that morning to admire it in such severe garb. I set the man down as proud and strange, and went up to my patient.

Jane was flushed and heavy-eyed and very glad to see me, and sorry for it in the same breath.

"Lizzy. You never walked."

"The whole county is agreed that I did. The mileage has been fixed by committee." I took her hand; it was too warm. "How is the throat?"

"I am a great deal of trouble to everybody."

"You are the only person under this roof who holds that opinion," I said, "and you may keep it to yourself, for it will get no second."

She smiled and was asleep before the hot water came, and the next days arranged themselves around her, as days in a sickroom do. I shall not give an account of each; they had a sameness in the memory. Jane mended slowly. I sat with her, came down when I was wanted and sometimes when I was not, and learned the household by living inside it. Miss Bingley pursued Mr. Darcy about the rooms with a constancy I could almost have admired had its object been worthier of the chase, and Mr. Darcy bore the pursuit with a patience that gave nothing and conceded nothing. When she declared one evening that the library at Pemberley could have no equal in the kingdom, he said without looking up that there were two better at Oxford, and turned his page. I found such moments more instructive than I let on to myself.