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“Mr. Pruett,” said Darcy, quite softly, without looking overtly stern, “who is Mr. Mattock?”

“A.” Pruett paused for a moment and then said, “He is a most respectable tradesman, sir. Local man.”

Darcy looked at the man directly. His face changed instantly into a stern, grave look, and he said, rather bluntly. “I believe Mattock is your wife’s brother.”

Having examined his Aunt’s accounts on many different occasions, Darcy was somewhat aware of the prominent business persons surrounding Rosings Park, including the relationship between Mr. Pruett and Mr. Mattock. Lady Catherine’s steward had noted it once, and Darcy had remembered.

He saw the colour leave the agent’s face, and then he knew he had put his hand on the right thing, and the rest of him, the part that had been hard and cold and clear since Hunsford, rose up with a peculiar savage satisfaction.

He thought about what he would do. He thought about it quite clearly, standing there in that stuffy room with the ledger in his hand and his bandaged knuckles aching. He would write a cheque for sixty-one pounds, on the spot, and put it on the table. He would tell Pruett that he would be out of Lady Catherine’s employ by Friday, and that if he cared for his liberty he would not appeal. He would ride down to the Tarrant farm, and tell the man to put his mind at rest, and see his face.

And he heard, with perfect distinctness, in the Colonel’s voice, You do not buy them out of their difficulties. He laid the ledger down, very carefully, on the table.

The farm lay in a fold of ground beyond the church, down a lane that had not been mended since the last century. There was a yard of churned mud, and a dog on a chain, and the long low barn with its failing roof; and in the open door of the house, drying her hands on her apron, stood a woman with a baby on her hip and the look of one who has been expecting a bailiff for a month.

***

Darcy dismounted at the gate and tied his horse. He had put on, that morning, the oldest coat he possessed, and he found that he was glad of it. The mud came up over his boots.

“Mrs. Tarrant? I am looking for your husband. My name is Darcy. I am a visitor at Rosings. I should like to speak to him about the farm, if he can spare the time.”

The woman stared. “He’s in the barn,” she said, “sir,” and then, on a sudden hard breath, “If it’s about the rent, he’s doing what he can.”

“I know,” said Darcy. “That is why I came.”

Abel Tarrant was a tall stooped man of fifty with hands like tree-roots and a face that had been the colour of mutton fat for two harvests; and he did not take his cap off. Darcy was obscurely, unreasonably pleased by it. He did not say sir. He listened with his arms folded to everything Darcy asked, and answered in monosyllables, and then, when Darcy asked whether he had ever agreed to the roof, the door, the drain, said slowly that he had not.

“Agent said it needed doing,” said Tarrant. “I said it didn’t. Roof was sound. Door’s the same door. Then the bill came.”

“Did you object?” Darcy asked calmly.

“To Mr. Pruett?” Tarrant’s mouth moved, with no humour in it. “Sir, I’ve a lease. And a family. I objected the once.”

Darcy stood in the barn with the smell of wet straw about him and looked at the ridge-pole, where the daylight showed in a long ragged line. It was a hard thing to bear, being told by a man in a muddy shirt what the world was like. He had never done it before. He listened to the end. It was close to eleven when he came out into the yard, and found that someone else had arrived before him.

Elizabeth was standing at the gate, with a basket on her arm. He had not expected her. That was the first absurd thing; he had been so full of the work, and the ledger, and the shape of the thing he was doing, that he had quite forgotten what it was for. Now he stopped dead in the middle of the yard with his sleeves rolled and a smear of tallow across his cuff, with mud to the shin and his hat in his bound hand, and every drop of blood went out of his face and came back again.

Elizabeth Bennet was looking at him as one looks at something they’re dreading. She had seen the horse, he thought. She had seen the horse and known, and came along anyway.

“Mr. Darcy,” she said, with a polite, demure bow.

“Miss Bennet.” He bowed, and it was an infernally stiff bow, and he could do nothing to soften it. She stared at him. Her eyes went to the bandage on his hand and rested there for the space of a breath, and then came up again, level and grave and unreadable.

She called out, “I did not know you were acquainted with the Tarrants.”

He shook his head slowly. “I am not.”

“Then I confess myself at a loss to account for your presence.” She set the basket down upon the gate-post. Her voice was perfectly civil; there was a coldness under the civility that was not hostile, he thought, so much as wary. “I come on Mrs. Collins’s errands, you see. She has a charitable interest in this family. I confess I did not think the parish’s need so great as to require a gentleman from Derbyshire.”

“Miss Bennet.” He started, but she cut him off.

“I beg your pardon, for it is not my affair. But I should hate to think you had come for the satisfaction of it.” It was meant to wound, and it did, though not where she aimed. He had expected something of the kind, and discovered that he had no answer ready; and the Colonel, who had warned him against the whole damnable business of defending himself, would have been proud.

“You may be right,” said Darcy simply.

She blinked, but did not reply.

“I do not know my own motive,” he went on, heavily. “I should be a liar if I said it was only charity. I do not understand yet what I am doing here. I thought I knew what was wrong, and I find I did not.” He stopped. He could not look at her, and so he looked at the dog. “The agent has been writing false charges against the tenants of Rosings for some years, I believe. The Tarrants’ account is one of several. I had meant to go to the man and make him pay. I had meant to put a cheque down on the table.”