Two letters from London in one post gave Mrs. Bennet more pleasure than the morning deserved, and Elizabeth less.

The breakfast room at Longbourn suffered drafts in January. The fire helped when tended with care, but the aged windows allowed gusts of frigid air now and then.

Hill had scarcely set down the coffee and hot rolls when she entered again with the post. Mrs. Bennet, who had been complaining of the cold over the toast, brightened at once.

“For me? For me, Hill? Ah! from Jane, I am sure of it. I know my child’s hand. And one for your papa besides. Well! London has remembered us at last.”

Mr. Bennet held out his hand with customary composure. “If London had forgotten us entirely, my dear, I confess I should not have thought the omission intolerable.”

“You may say what you please, Mr. Bennet, but I am always happy to hear from my girls. Jane writes the prettiest letters in the world. Lizzy, only think — how excessively kind of her to remember that I desired an account of every creature she sees.”

Elizabeth, who had no doubt Jane remembered everybody’s wishes and her own least of all, said nothing. Her mother had broken the seal before the coffee was poured.

“My dearest mother — yes, yes — your brother and sister Gardiner are all kindness — very proper — and here is something of consequence. ‘I had the opportunity yesterday of making a call in Grosvenor Street and was afterward very obligingly set down at Gracechurch Street by Mr. Darcy, who happened to be there and offered me a seat in his carriage.’ There now! Mr. Darcy himself.”

Kitty laughed because her mother did. Lydia asked whether Jane had seen any officers. Mary looked as though she would have preferred a sermon. Mr. Bennet put on his spectacles and opened his own letter.

Elizabeth had already reached for Jane’s. “May I?”

Mrs. Bennet gave it up after smoothing the page flat upon the table. “Take it, child. I desire only that you should remember I have always understood these matters better than the rest of you.”

Elizabeth bent over the sheet. There was gratitude to her aunt, a civil mention of the Hursts, and Mr. Darcy’s name slipped quietly into the middle as if it signified nothing. Mr. Bingley’s did not appear at all.

That omission was worth more than all Mrs. Bennet’s triumph.

Mr. Darcy did not distinguish a Bennet daughter for nothing. If he had taken notice of Jane at all, it would be to interfere — to judge, to arrange, to decide for others what ought to be felt and what permitted.

“Well?” said her mother, leaning forward. “Do not sit looking so wise, Lizzy. I call it a very particular civility.”

“Then Mr. Darcy has at last done something particular to your satisfaction,” said Mr. Bennet, still reading.

Mrs. Bennet treated this as agreement. “Exactly so! I always said people were too severe upon him. If Mr. Bingley chooses to stay away, there are others who do not. With five daughters and Longbourn entailed away, a mother cannot afford to despise attention merely because it comes from a proud man. And Mr. Darcy, with ten thousand a year! Though to be sure he is disagreeable enough; but disagreeable men have married before now.”

Elizabeth laid down the letter. “Jane says very little of the visit.”

“Because she is the sweetest creature and would never boast. If Lydia had been driven home by such a gentleman, we should hear of nothing else for a month.”

“I should tell it better than Jane, to be sure,” Lydia said.

“You would tell it till no gentleman ventured to hand you into anything again,” Mr. Bennet said.

The room laughed; Elizabeth let it do so. It was no place to dispute nonsense, and Jane’s letter had given her little enough to oppose it with. She took up her cup, and in the same moment saw her father’s face alter.

The change was slight enough to pass unobserved by half his family, but Elizabeth had lived too long under the government of his countenance to miss it. He had come to the end of the first page and was no longer smiling. He folded the letter once, opened it again, finished the rest, and then laid it beside his plate.

Mrs. Bennet, who missed little that might concern herself, turned immediately. “Well, Mr. Bennet? What says my brother? Does he mention Jane?”

“My brother Gardiner says a variety of sensible things,” he replied at last. “A dangerous practice in a letter addressed to this house.”

“And what are they? Pray let us hear them.”

“Not now.”

Mrs. Bennet stared. “Not now! Why not now? I am sure if my brother writes of my own child, I have a right to know every word.”

“You have a right, my dear, to know whatever it is useful for you to know. The rest I shall reserve for the improvement of my own understanding.”

“That is extremely provoking. I hate secrets in families. They always mean something disagreeable.”

“Then you may be easy. If I intended to disagree with you, I would do it openly.”

He rose from table with the letter in his hand.

Mrs. Bennet called after him, but he only shook his head and went out.

Elizabeth watched the door close. One letter had been made a public entertainment and yielded almost nothing; the other was hidden at once. The hidden one, therefore, contained what mattered, and London had sent more than Jane had thought fit to say.

She folded her sister’s letter and returned it to her mother, who was already lamenting that husbands were never manageable where brothers ought to assist them. Elizabeth scarcely heard her.

Three days passed, and brought no better explanation. Mr. Bennet had waited, perhaps, to see whether another post or Jane’s own hand would make interference unnecessary. Neither obliged him.

Mrs. Bennet read Jane’s letter whenever she wished to be encouraged by her own voice, and was still able to extract fresh consequence from the mention of Mr. Darcy’s carriage. Mr. Bennet neither fed her expectations nor relieved Elizabeth’s uncertainty. Jane’s letter remained as unsatisfactory in recollection as it had been at first reading.

As Elizabeth was crossing the hall on the fourth afternoon, with a book in her hand and little attention to spare for it, the study door opened.

“Lizzy.”

She turned at once. “Sir?”

“If you are not too much engaged with that volume, come in. I have something for you better worth reading.”

She marked her place with a finger and obeyed. The study was colder than the hall; the fire had burned low, and the light on the green baize of his desk had already begun to fail. Mr. Bennet shut the door, went back to the desk, and took up the letter he had kept since the post.

“You have looked at me for three days,” he said, “as if I carried in my pocket the whole history of London. I do not. Your uncle is not so prolix. But he has written one passage which I think you ought to see.”

He handed her the sheet, his finger laid upon the place. Elizabeth read.

Jane continues all sweetness and composure, but I do not like the degree of quiet she imposes upon herself. My wife is persuaded, and I am not inclined to dispute her, that the presence of her sister would be of real service. If Lizzy can be spared from Longbourn, she will be most heartily welcome at Gracechurch Street.

Elizabeth read it twice. The paper gave a little crackle beneath her hand.

“My poor Jane.”

“Only in the amiable way,” said Mr. Bennet. “She would rather have the influenza than give your mother a subject.”

“She is worse, then, than she has owned.”

“So your uncle thinks.”

Elizabeth looked up from the letter. “I must go to her.”

“I see no reason to keep you here for the edification of the poultry-yard. You may go as soon as it can be properly arranged.”

“Thank you, sir.” She set the letter carefully on the desk. “There is something more in my uncle’s letter.”

“There usually is in a letter of two pages.”

“And you will not tell me?”

“I will not read aloud what he did not write for the breakfast table. When you are with Jane, you will see what is necessary better than you can from here.”

There was more, then, and he meant to keep it.

She did not press him further. “I will write to her this evening.”

“Do so. I shall answer your uncle.”

Elizabeth moved toward the door, then paused. “Thank you, Papa.”

He made a slight motion of the hand, as though gratitude, like several other domestic articles, was best kept from overuse. “Go and be useful, Lizzy. We are not rich in that commodity.”

That, from Mr. Bennet, was nearly urgency.

She went directly upstairs. Her room was cold enough that the candle stirred in the drafts as she set her little writing desk nearer the hearth and opened it. A clean sheet, the inkstand, a pen newly mended — these occupied her at once. Jane’s last letter lay beside the blotting book; she left it folded.

She wrote quickly. The first lines reproved Jane for sparing them too much; the next disposed of all argument by treating her journey as settled. She asked no questions that could be answered only by patience, named no one beyond the family and Gracechurch Street, and left Mr. Darcy entirely out of the page.

When she reached the bottom, she read it over once, drew her pen through a phrase that sounded too much like asking leave, and wrote another in its place. Then she added one sentence more.

She sanded the sheet, shook off the excess, folded and sealed it before any softer addition could present itself.

The last line stood plain and firm beneath her hand:

I am coming.