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“No.”

Jane’s smile was so slight that Elizabeth might have ignored it if she had not known her sister so well.

“That does not improve his conduct.”

“He has asked Papa, Lizzy. And he has asked you to decide when you have heard from him. There is still time to refuse.”

“I know there is.”

“Then nothing need be settled tonight.”

It was an inconveniently sensible answer. Elizabeth picked up the end of the shawl and smoothed its fringe.

At Longbourn, a new gown was discussed before it was bought, during its making, and afterward by anybody who had not yet expressed an opinion. There was comfort in those familiar economies, even when they occasioned disagreements. She knew what a thing cost and what might be spared to purchase it. Mr. Darcy’s means made the question appear too small to be considered, and she disliked feeling small beside it.

More than that, she could not accept a kindness from him without remembering the doubt beneath all her judgments of his conduct. He was generous to Jane. He was considerate of their father. Anna’s support was assured. None of those things answered how the child had come into the world, or what promises her mother had believed.

Jane touched her arm.

“You need not take more than you want.”

Elizabeth folded the fringe beneath her hand. “I am not certain I want anything.”

“A warmer pelisse would be useful.”

“You are determined to reduce my principles to the weather.”

“No. Only your shivering.”

Elizabeth laughed, and Jane’s face brightened with the success of it.

They spoke of the baby instead. Jane had felt it move particularly strongly while Charles read to her, and her husband had taken the event as proof of an interest in the book. Elizabeth undertook to find a passage so dull that the experiment might be properly tested. By the time she went to her own room, she had ceased imagining Mr. Darcy inspecting every garment in her drawer.

Elizabeth resolved not to inquire about every letter brought into the house.

She succeeded until breakfast.

After that she became more reasonable. She walked with Jane, read or sewed beside her until she slept after lunch, then sought Mrs. Reynolds. They did not meet every day.

On Thursday, Elizabeth arrived at the housekeeper’s room with a question concerning Mara and found her paying the butcher and checking his entries against the household book. Mrs. Reynolds gave her a look which meant not now. Elizabeth withdrew, took her question upstairs, and found that it would keep until the following afternoon.

Her dreams had supplied no further assistance. She was grateful for undisturbed sleep and disappointed by it, a contradiction which Mrs. Reynolds heard with more patience than Elizabeth deserved.

“I do not wish to be frightened every night,” Elizabeth said when they at last had half an hour together. “But if there is something I am meant to understand, I could wish to hear it while I have somebody sensible at hand.”

Mrs. Reynolds put her grandmother’s extracts upon the table.

“We may learn something from these without waiting for you to be frightened again.”

They read with the window open and a dish of apples between them. Nothing in the room stirred except what they moved themselves. Elizabeth found that circumstance more comforting than any assurance could have been.

One word in an extract had been written so closely against the next that she read it twice before admitting defeat. Mrs. Reynolds fetched a second sheet and compared the hand. Her grandmother had written the same word elsewhere. Between them they made it out, only to discover that it concerned a quantity of linen.

Elizabeth leaned back and laughed.

“I had almost persuaded myself it must explain everything.”

“My grandmother generally meant linen when she wrote about it.”