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Mrs. Neale looked from her to Darcy, plainly regretting that her face had spoken before her tongue.

“My grandmother used to tell it, miss. I meant no offense to the house.”

“Then perhaps you will not give any by telling us,” Elizabeth replied.

Darcy’s gaze moved to her. “There have been unhappy confinements at Pemberley. People have made a superstition of them.”

“At every house of any age, surely,” Charles said.

“Precisely.”

Mrs. Neale folded her hands. “My grandmother’s sister was one of them. Mrs. Allen, the gardener’s wife. There had been damage to their cottage, and she was given a room in the house until it could be put right. Her little boy lived. She did not.”

Elizabeth’s appetite deserted her. She thought of Jane’s sunny rooms and the drawers in which they were laying small folded garments.

“How long ago was that?” she asked.

“Before I was born, miss. My grandmother remembered being sent for in the night. There were other accounts, but that was the one she knew herself.”

“And from that came the superstition?”

“Not from that alone. There was a story before her time of a woman who laid a curse upon the place. She had been ill-used, they said, and no mother lying in there would have cause to bless the house.”

The landlady looked uncomfortable as soon as she had repeated the saying.

“It is old talk, miss. I ought not to have brought it to table.”

“You did not,” Darcy said. “You were asked.”

Elizabeth looked at him. His face was composed, but the hand beside his glass was closed. She remembered suddenly that his own sister had died in the spring. Had that death also been one of the unhappy confinements of which Mrs. Neale spoke?

No; Jane had told her the poor girl was only sixteen. Miss Darcy had not been married. Elizabeth dismissed the thought, ashamed that the landlady’s story had led her to it at all. She did not know what illness had taken his sister, but he need not have lost her in the manner described to be distressed by hearing of another young woman’s death. She ought to have considered that before pressing the landlady.

Mrs. Neale excused herself to attend to something in the kitchen. Caroline waited until she had gone before turning to Elizabeth.

“I hope you have heard enough.”

“I asked about an account concerning the house where my sister is to be confined.”

“And received a village tale about a curse. What advantage do you propose Jane should derive from hearing it?”

“None. I do not propose to tell her.”

Charles put down his fork. “Jane would laugh at a curse. But she would be sorry for Mrs. Allen, and then wonder whether she ought to be taking somebody else’s room.”

Elizabeth almost smiled. He understood his wife well enough.

“There is no scarcity of rooms,” Darcy said.

“Which would not prevent her,” Charles replied. “Let us leave Mrs. Neale’s grandmother in peace. We have sufficient business with the house we saw today.”

He began asking Caroline whether she had noticed the crack in a looking glass, and the conversation returned, with some effort, to matters upon which it was safe to disagree. Elizabeth ate a little more and wished she had not been so ready to make the landlady explain herself.

The dream came back to her while she was reaching for her glass: the child in her arms, the unfamiliar cradle. It supplied no reason to believe the story. She had dreamed before she heard it, but she had also spent the morning with Anna and the whole week thinking of Jane’s baby. An account of a woman dying in childbirth did not make every dream of a cradle remarkable.

She repeated that argument to herself with sufficient care to discover she had not entirely dismissed the discomfort.

After dinner, Caroline went upstairs to ask Sally about a ribbon, and Charles followed a servant to see where his note was to be left for the carrier. Elizabeth remained by the small bookcase, searching for something to occupy the evening. Most of its volumes appeared to have been abandoned by travelers who had discovered at precisely this stage that they could bear to part with them.