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“And the Colonel?” Elizabeth sounded nervous.

“The Colonel,” said Charlotte, “will be engaged with Lady Catherine in the saloon. I have the impression that Mr. Darcy has made quite certain of it.”

So she went. The evening at Rosings was a long one. Her ladyship sat in a state of stately fury, like a volcano that has decided to be civil, and said nothing whatever upon the subject of Wednesday’s visit; Anne de Bourgh coughed; Mr. Collins applauded every remark. Darcy sat at the far end of the room, by the window, with a book. He did not look at her. He did not look at anything. And yet there was something in his stillness, as the clock moved toward ten, that she could not fail to feel, like the hum of a wire drawn tight.

At a quarter past she rose, and said she had left her shawl in the hall, and went out.

The lower garden at Rosings lay at the foot of a flight of eleven stone steps, below the terrace, in a hollow that the great house’s lights did not reach. It was a still night. A thin moon stood over the yews, and the gravel gave back a faint glimmer, and from somewhere very far off she could hear the clink of a harness-chain and a stable door shutting. The air was cold and smelled of box and damp and late roses.

He was standing by the sundial, with his hands behind his back. Darcy saw her coming, but he did not come forward to meet her. He did not bow. He turned his head as she came down the last step, and she saw by the moon that his face was quite grave and rather pale, and that he held himself with the careful, deliberate looseness of a man who is trying not to look like one. “Miss Bennet.”

She offered him a slight bow. “Mr. Darcy. I hope you have not been kept waiting.”

“I should have waited longer.” He was calm and sounded almost thoughtful.

She did not know what to do with it, so she walked past him a little way along the path, and he fell into step at her side, a yard off, and they went along for some time without speaking, with the gravel crunching. It was a very odd sensation. She had imagined this meeting so often in the last three days, from so many angles, in so many varieties of eloquence, that she had half expected the reality to arrive like a curtain rising on a play. And it was nothing like. It was only two people in a garden, in the dark, trying not to tread on each other’s feet.

“Mr. Eames is mending,” she said at last. “I went to see his wife on Thursday.” She stopped a moment and looked up to Mr. Darcy. “Mr. Haslam says he may keep the leg.”

He nodded twice. “I am glad to hear it.”

“The little girl asked after you. She wished to know if the gentleman with the knife had come to harm.” She smiled then. “I assured her you had not.”

The corner of his mouth moved. “I am obliged to you, Miss Bennet.”

“It was frightening,” said Elizabeth. “But she was not at all frightened of you.”

Darcy considered what she said, and replied, “I did not shout at her.”

She laughed at his reply, and it rang out in the quiet of the garden. And she stopped, and put her hand to her mouth; and when she took it away she saw that he was looking at her with an expression she could not read at all. He did not smile. But there was something about the eyes that said he had heard it, and would remember.

They came to the end of the path, where a low stone wall ran along the foot of the park, and stood by it. The moon had gone behind a thin cloud. It was very dark and she was glad of it. “I have been wishing to say something to you,” said Elizabeth. She took a breath and exhaled. “I do not think you do.” She drew in another breath. “It concerns the evening at the parsonage, and it is a thing that I have not been able to put out of my mind. I do not say it to wound you.” She paused for a moment, and then said, “I say it because I think that you wish me to be honest.”

He certainly did want her honesty and said so. “I do.”

“Then I will say that I think you believed,” said Elizabeth, slowly, feeling for the words, “that if you only loved me hard enough, I should be obliged to accept it.”

He did not answer at once. She waited. She heard him draw in his breath, and let it out; she heard his boot move on the gravel. She had braced herself for a flat denial, or a cold, offended politeness; she had not prepared for the quiet, painful, entirely unguarded thing he did instead, which was to take her at her word.

“Yes,” said Darcy exhaling through his nose. It was a rough sound, hardly a voice at all. “I thought,” he said, “that I was offering you something that few men could offer. I had been brought up to believe that a man of my position, who does a woman the honour to wish to marry her, has done her the highest compliment in his power. I thought my feelings should have been enough to overcome any objection you could have to my manner, or my.” He broke off. “I thought they must be. I thought if you knew how much, if you knew how I had struggled, you would see that I was giving you everything.”

She laughed a small, bitter laugh. “You told me my family was beneath you. You told me that your love was a degradation, an act of charity you were obliged to perform. I should have borne it from a stranger. I cannot tell you what it was to hear it from a man who said he loved me, and to understand that he did not see how much he hurt me in the telling.”

She stopped. She had meant to be calm, and she was aware of a pulse in her throat. “I do not doubt that your love was sincere,” she said. “I see now that it was. But it does not give you the right to insult my family, and it does not give you the right to presume upon my gratitude, Mr. Darcy; as though a woman must be grateful to be chosen. And it does not, sir, make me yours to dispose of by the plain act of your wanting it.”

She waited for him to answer, but it did not come quickly. He was standing quite still, with his back against the wall and his head slightly bowed. He did not interrupt. He did not defend himself. He did not say, you misunderstand, or I meant, or had you known; she had been waiting for it, with the old hot readiness, and it did not come. There was nothing but the silence, and the faint far sound of the stable-clock striking the half-hour, and a man in a dark coat, listening, with the whole of his attention, as a prisoner listens to a sentence he knows to be just.

“I was wrong,” said Darcy at last. That was all.

Elizabeth let out her breath. She did not think that it was victory. She had expected, once, that she would find it sweet to hear him say it; she had thought of the words so often. It was nothing of the kind. It was only a great weariness, and a sort of tenderness that she did not wish to look at, and below that, rising slowly, like water in a well, a small cold shame that was entirely her own.

She looked up towards him, and said, “I was wrong too.”

“Miss Bennet?” He sounded alarmed, almost shocked, the words poured out of him quickly.

“No, let me.” She turned and looked out over the dark park, with her hands pressed flat against the cold stone of the wall. “I let a man’s charm outweigh my reason. Though, I will own that I did it deliberately, because I wished to dislike you.” She shook her head in self-reproach. “Mr. Wickham said what I wanted to hear, in the way I wanted to hear it, and I did not once ask why a stranger should take such pains to be kind. I told myself I was a good judge of people. I thought I had the quickest eye in Hertfordshire.” She gave a short, unsteady laugh. “I was proud of it, you know. Of being clever about character. I think I was prouder of that than of anything.”

“It is not a small thing to be mistaken in,” said Darcy, slowly. “I have been mistaken in it most of my life.”