Elizabeth turned away. “Perhaps.”
Silence settled between them.
Jane shifted slightly against the pillows. “Did he speak of you?”
Elizabeth grew still. The question, though quietly asked, struck with remarkable precision. Jane had given voice to the very suspicion Elizabeth had scarcely admitted to herself.
“I cannot say with certainty.”
She had her suspicions, though she might easily be mistaken.
Jane’s attention remained steady. “You believe he may have.”
Elizabeth smothered a sigh. Jane knew her exceedingly well.
“He described a woman,” she said, her voice lower now but perfectly clear. “A woman who reads, who thinks, who speaks without vanity, and who is kind without seeking notice for it.”
Jane's features warmed. “That sounds like a very admirable woman.”
“Yes.”
“And what did you feel?”
Elizabeth found no immediate answer. She moved restlessly, though nowhere in the room offered escape from the question. At length, she returned to the chair and resumed her seat, folding her hands in her lap.
“I felt,” she said slowly, “that he was speaking of someone he knew rather than some abstract ideal.”
Jane’s smile carried a touch of warmth that might, in better health, have become amusement. “And you believed that person to be yourself.”
Elizabeth met her sister's gaze, a brief flash of resistance rising before she could suppress it. “I made no such claim.”
Jane’s expression remained unchanged. “You did not need to.”
Elizabeth directed her attention to the window.
“He was speaking to me,” she said after a moment. “While he spoke.”
Jane’s fingers tightened once more around hers. “And you found that disagreeable?”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again.
The truth resisted the expectations she had so carefully formed.
“I was unprepared for it,” she said at last.
Jane studied her. “That is hardly the same thing.”
“No.”
Another silence followed, carrying greater weight than the first.
Elizabeth’s thoughts returned to the sitting room.
To the subtle change in his voice—neither louder nor subdued, but more assured.
To the ease with which he contradicted Miss Bingley, apparently indifferent to any consequences.
To the absurd declaration that he might marry a milkmaid if he chose, delivered without the slightest hint of jest.
