Page 231 of A Question of Character

Darcy, though occasionally startled by the companion’s severity, admitted privately that Georgiana had never before encountered anyone entirely immune to tears, sulks, or persuasive pleading.

It was many more months before his sister could accept the full measure of her own responsibility.

The first true admission arrived unexpectedly.

Georgiana had been writing letters under Mrs. Harcourt’s supervision when she suddenly laid down her pen and confessed, in a trembling voice, that she had lied to her brother from fear and had continued lying from pride. No dramatic reconciliation followed. Lady Matlock simply instructed her to continue writing.

“You have made an honest beginning,” she said. “Now finish the letter.”

When Darcy received it several days later, he read every line twice before placing it inside his desk. Elizabeth found him there some minutes afterward.

“You will answer it?”

“I already have.”

She noticed another sheet of paper lying beside the first.

“I merely wished to make certain I chose the precise words.”

Even so, trust was slow to be rebuilt, and she remained in the care of her aunt.

No one hurried the process. Georgiana herself came to understand that forgiveness could be freely offered while confidence required time to restore. She accepted Lady Matlock’s discipline with increasing grace, learned to laugh again without bitterness, and gradually resumed the accomplishments that had once afforded her such pleasure. Her correspondence with Elizabeth became more frequent, each letter revealing a little more humility than the one preceding it.

The next three years altered the Darcy family in quieter and happier ways. It was not until Darcy and Elizabeth welcomed their second child and Georgiana was nineteen years of age before everyone agreed she was ready to be presented.

Those intervening years brought abundant happiness to Pemberley. Their first child, a son, inherited his father’s dark eyes and his mother’s lively curiosity, while their daughter possessed an expression so remarkably like Elizabeth’s that Darcy often declared himself entirely outnumbered whenever the two smiled at him together. The nursery became the happiest room in the house, and visitors rarely escaped without being persuaded to admire some new accomplishment or amusing observation made by one child or the other.

Georgiana delighted in her niece and nephew whenever she visited Derbyshire.

Children, Elizabeth observed, possessed a remarkable gift for drawing people beyond themselves. Her sister-in-law, once so consumed by wounded pride, could spend an hour building towers of wooden blocks only to laugh when an enthusiastic toddler demolished them.

By the time Georgiana reached her nineteenth year, even Lady Matlock acknowledged that further delay served no useful purpose.

Properly humble, Miss Darcy was an instant success her first season, and eventually married a respectable man of whom her guardians approved.

The gentleman possessed neither dazzling charm nor extravagant fortune. He was, however, honorable, sensible, patient, and entirely unimpressed by wealth for its own sake. Darcy approved his judgment. Colonel Fitzwilliam approved his character. Lady Matlock approved nearly everything about him except his handwriting, which she declared deplorable.

Elizabeth liked him because he listened more than he spoke whenever Georgiana entered the room.

He allowed her time to form her own opinions, never hurried her conversation, and treated her accomplishments with unaffected admiration rather than excessive praise. Watching them together, Darcy confessed one evening that he believed his sister had at last found exactly the sort of gentleman she ought always to have married.

She did not love him with the reckless certainty she had once mistaken for devotion, and part of her welcomed the independence marriage offered, but she respected him and believed affection might safely grow.

Elizabeth understood the hesitation better than most.

First attachments, however mistaken, seldom disappeared at another person’s convenience. Georgiana carried the memory of her youthful folly for many years, less because she continued to love George Wycombe than because she regretted the young woman she had been when she believed him worthy of such affection.

Her husband never demanded comparisons with the past.

Instead, he built their life, day by day, through countless ordinary kindnesses that asked for no recognition.

Eventually, she learned to love her husband and knew the same happiness her brother shared with his wife.

Mr. Wickham formally requested Miss Lydia Bennet’s hand in marriage the week after she turned sixteen.

Although no one who had observed them together during the preceding year professed surprise, Mr. Wickham approached Mr. Bennet with all the seriousness the occasion deserved. He neither presumed upon his welcome at Longbourn nor upon the affection Lydia had never troubled herself to disguise. Instead, he spoke candidly of his circumstances, his prospects in Mr. Philips’s office, and his determination to provide comfortably for the young lady whose cheerful spirits had first persuaded him that happiness need not depend upon wealth alone.

Mr. Bennet listened longer than he had during Darcy’s interview, though perhaps because Mr. Wickham, unlike Darcy, occasionally required encouragement to believe himself worthy of the happiness before him.