Elizabeth reached London before the week was out, prepared to dislike the city upon general principles, and found, on entering Gracechurch Street, that she had no leisure to bestow upon it. Her first business there was not the smoke, nor the clatter, nor the endless houses; it was her sister’s face.

Mrs. Gardiner met her almost as soon as the carriage stopped, with such brisk affection that her maid Betsy was directed inside and the boxes claimed by other hands before Elizabeth had finished kissing her aunt.

“My dear Lizzy, here you are at last! You have had a cold journey.”

“Only long enough to make me value the end of it,” Elizabeth said. “If this is your common manner of receiving travelers, I do not know why all Hertfordshire does not remove to Gracechurch Street.”

“We could not stable them. Come in directly. Jane, child⁠—”

Jane was just behind her. They kissed, and Jane said, “I am so glad you are come,” in so perfectly her own voice that for an instant Elizabeth was deceived by it.

Then she looked at Jane’s face, and the deception ended. Elizabeth could not have named, in that first moment, what feature was altered; she only knew that Jane’s countenance no longer met hers with its old unstudied ease. The smile was ready, but it thinned too soon; after the embrace Jane drew herself upright with a little care, as if even that brief exertion had warned her. The gown that had always sat so quietly well upon her hung flatter at the shoulder. She was not visibly ill; she looked like a person living too much upon self-command.

Elizabeth put down her muff. “You have chosen to make me ashamed of every day I stayed away.”

Jane’s look softened. “No, indeed. I have only chosen to be impatient.”

“That is not like you. London corrupts the best principles.”

Mrs. Gardiner laughed and turned them toward the drawing room. It had always been comfortable without making any profession of comfort, its good mahogany used rather than displayed; and before Elizabeth could settle into its familiar order, a little girl of the house, emboldened by the arrival, escaped her nurse, ran in, and cried, “Cousin Lizzy!”

Elizabeth stooped to kiss her. “So I am, if you will have me.”

“I will — if you know whether Kitty sent back the striped ribbon from Meryton.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, “for Kitty never brings back what she carries away.”

“Then she is not fit for London,” Mrs. Gardiner said.

“Kitty has other qualifications,” Elizabeth replied. “She thinks every ribbon a necessity and every bonnet a moral question.”

“That is Lydia’s doctrine,” Jane said; and there was the faintest real amusement in her voice.

“Kitty borrows her principles from Lydia, as she borrows everything else.”

A servant brought in the tea things; Jane took her place at the table before anyone could prevent her.

“Will you take sugar, Lizzy?” she asked.

“As much as London can spare.”

“We are fallen very low,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “One lump and gratitude.”

“Then I must learn economy.”

Jane smiled and passed the cup. Her hand was perfectly steady, but Elizabeth noticed that after each little office was performed, Jane let her fingers rest a moment on the edge of the tray, as if she were careful not to spend herself even in trifles.

“And how have you left Longbourn?” Mrs. Gardiner said.

“In noise, health, and confident ignorance,” Elizabeth answered. “My mother sent you six messages, each designed to amend the last. My father desired me not to overthrow the government before I returned. Mary sent a book for moral improvement, though she did not specify whose.”

“I hope she meant London’s,” Mrs. Gardiner said.

“London’s is beyond her present powers. Kitty sent inquiries after trade, and Lydia sent intelligence of her own attractions.”

“Those are always abundant,” Jane said.

“Never more so. She is at present convinced that one of the officers is attached to her because he once moved a chair from her path.”

“A chair!” cried Mrs. Gardiner.

“A decisive officer. She considers it nearly equivalent to an offer.”

Jane laughed then, more freely than she had yet done, and the sound went so exactly to Elizabeth’s heart that she answered with some foolish enlargement of Lydia’s vanity only to hear it again.

“Did she tell my mother so?” Jane asked.

“She told everybody so. Mother thought the officer encouraging, Kitty romantic, Mary disapproving, and Father took refuge behind his newspaper.”

“That was wisest,” Mrs. Gardiner said.

The room grew quieter. Tea went on. Elizabeth answered questions, asked some herself, and kept her tone as easy as Jane’s own.

Yet when the tray was at last set aside, and no one happened to be looking at her, Jane leaned back a little from the fire with the look of a person glad to have come to the end of a task too slight to be named. Elizabeth understood then not merely that Jane had suffered, but that the common business of an hour now demanded management from her.

Cheerfulness itself had become an exertion.

When later Mrs. Gardiner led Elizabeth upstairs to see her room and satisfy herself that Betsy had not misplaced half a wardrobe, Elizabeth waited with such patience as she could command. The moment the door was shut, patience was dismissed.

“My aunt, how long has she been doing everything as if it cost her nothing?”

Mrs. Gardiner, who was taking off her cap pins before the glass, met Elizabeth’s look in the reflection. “Since she came to us? No. Since she ceased expecting very much? Nearly.”

Elizabeth set her gloves down upon the table.

“She is her mother’s daughter in countenance and her father’s in reserve,” Mrs. Gardiner went on, “but when it is a question of sparing others, she improves on both. Do not let us wrong her letters. They said all she could bear to have read aloud.”

“I do not wrong them. I only begin to know what each easy sentence must have cost.”

Elizabeth walked once to the window and back. The panes were dim with cold; below, wheels went by and voices rose and were lost again. “She looks as though she had been trying not to feel anything for a month.”

“That would exhaust stronger people than Jane.”

There was no need to ask of what. Mrs. Gardiner, with the mercy of sensible women, did not produce names merely because names existed.

“Has she been ill at all?” Elizabeth asked.

“No fever, no cough, nothing a physician could flatter himself with understanding. She eats little, sleeps tolerably, goes where she is asked, and says she is very content. It is an account to please everybody except those who live with her. The morning after any exertion of hope is bad; a wholly quiet day is worse.”

Elizabeth stopped before her aunt. “Then she has been suffered to do what she always does. To spare everybody at her own expense.”

Mrs. Gardiner folded her hands before her. “We have not neglected her, Lizzy. She has all the kindness this house can provide; but kindness leaves too much room for patience.”

“She must not be left to sit so.”

“No. But you must not imagine that because you have come, she can be reasoned into spirits. If you press her to tell you everything, she will spend what strength she has in persuading you there is nothing to tell.”

“I do not mean to examine her.”

“Good.”

“I mean to prevent her from having leisure for this sort of tranquility.” Elizabeth’s mouth altered on the last word. “If she is content, she shall be content in motion.”

Mrs. Gardiner looked at her for a moment; then the corners of her mouth followed. “That sounds very like you.”

“Does it sound foolish?”

“It sounds active, which is often a better thing. What do you propose?”

“Anything proper that takes her out of herself. Walks when the weather allows, errands when it does not, shops, visits if we can contrive them without tedium, any sight in town that may be seen respectably. I do not care whether she buys ribbon or stares at a picture, so long as she is made to look somewhere beyond the fender.”

“She will go if you ask her.”

“That is part of the difficulty. Jane would go to her own execution if it spared another person inconvenience.”

“Then we must take care not to turn every expedition into sacrifice. She has done enough of that already.”

Elizabeth sat down. “You think me too violent.”

“I think you very like yourself,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “And I think you right that she must be drawn out, if it can be done gently.”

“Then you are with me?”

“I sent for you, Lizzy. I did not do it to keep you seated by the fire with your hands folded.”

That was so like an alliance that Elizabeth’s shoulders, which had been held a little high since the moment she entered the house, eased without her permission.

“I shall be very useful,” she said.

“I depend upon it. Only be useful in a way Jane can endure.”

Elizabeth smiled. “You distrust my methods.”

“I admire them at a distance. In my own drawing room, I reserve the right to overrule them.”

There was more comfort in that than in a dozen solemn assurances. A plan, even an imperfect one, had the merit of giving shape to a day. She had not come to London to sit and pity. Mrs. Gardiner would not let her; Elizabeth would not let herself. Jane had endured. Very well. Endurance might now be opposed by activity.

By evening, the Gardiner home in Gracechurch Street had done what it did best: turned anxiety into occupation. When Mr. Gardiner came home from business, he welcomed Elizabeth with such ready kindness that she understood at once why Jane had been able to be unhappy there without being uncomfortable.

“So here is my niece at last,” he said. “We are made grand by your arrival, and I suspect the children have done nothing all afternoon but demand intelligence from the hall.”

At supper he entertained them with the history of a customer whose liberality had been all in opinion and none in payment.

“There are men,” he said, “who make a generosity of every failure.”

The meal was easy, the children lively. When Mrs. Gardiner asked for the salt, Jane was already reaching it; when one of the boys dropped his spoon, she stooped first to recover it.

Yet when the children claimed the room and the talk ran easily without her, Jane yielded place, yielded voice, yielded notice with such practiced sweetness that Elizabeth saw, more clearly than before, how much of her sister’s meekness had lately become surrender.

Later, in her room, Elizabeth stood a moment by the bed and considered.

The Gardiners could do a great deal. They could keep a good fire, provide affectionate company, prevent impertinence, and make an evening pass lightly. What they could not do was choose for Jane. That office Jane would always perform against herself.

The answer, then, was not deeper quiet but interruption. There must be errands, air, some nonsense made respectable, some respectable thing made lively — anything that required a bonnet rather than submission.

Before Elizabeth undressed, she had settled one point for the morrow: Jane must go out.