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“You surprise me.”

“Do I?”

“Indeed. I had always imagined you a great admirer of dullness.”

Mr Darcy raised an eyebrow. “You mistake me, Miss Elizabeth. I admire order, not dullness.”

“And you believe the two are entirely distinct?”

“Perfectly.”

Elizabeth smiled a challenge at him. “Then perhaps you may instruct me in the difference.”

Mr Darcy considered this with an air of seriousness that edged into jest, an expression of humour she would not have looked for in him. “Order is when matters proceed with intention,” he said at last. “Dullness is when they proceed without imagination.”

“Then I fear I must plead guilty to promoting disorder. Imagination is rarely obedient,” Elizabeth said.

“I have noticed.”

She glanced at him with mock suspicion. “Have you?”

“Yes. You possess a talent for improving situations that might otherwise pass from order into insignificance.”

Elizabeth laughed lightly. “If by improvement you mean interference, I shall not deny it.”

“I did not say interference.”

“You thought it.”

“I merely observed it,” Mr Darcy protested with a smile.

They continued walking. Elizabeth found herself thinking that conversation with him required surprisingly little effort. He responded to wit with wit, not wounded pride. It was curiously agreeable.

Mr Bingley’s good-natured chuckle carried back to them from the front of the party, followed by Jane’s gentle laughter in response. Elizabeth glanced toward them, feeling her heart lift with a simple, uncomplicated hope.

“They are well matched,” Mr Darcy said quietly.

“I believe so,” Elizabeth replied. “I should like to see Jane matched to a gentleman as sensible and principled as she is herself. And the more I come to see of Mr Bingley, the more I think him everything that might make her truly happy. However such happiness has come to pass.”

Elizabeth had not intended to say the last part. She bit her lip at what she had betrayed, but it was already too late. Mr Darcy had heard and understood it, though he responded instead to the larger substance of her remark.

“I am glad of it also,” Mr Darcy said. “Bingley deserves someone who sees him clearly. Many people see only the agreeableness.”

“And miss the substance underneath.”

“Yes.”

She considered this, and his ready acceptance of it. “Do you find that often? That people are seen only by their surface?”

He glanced at her. “I find it common enough to be unremarkable.”

“And do you include yourself in that?”

The gravel crunched underfoot, and the barren tree limbs reached across the drive. Somewhere in the middle distance, a wood pigeon made its repetitive complaint.

“I think that the surface I present is not always an accurate representation of what is underneath it. Whether that is my fault or the observer’s is a question I have not entirely resolved,” Mr Darcy said thoughtfully.

It was the most direct thing he had said to her in weeks, possibly ever, and she turned it over with the attention it deserved.