“I shall look forward to it,” Elizabeth said.
***
That night, Elizabeth thought a good deal about Mr. Collins’ sermon on forgiveness. She understood quite well that she harboured a good deal of anger toward her father. Was it time to forgive him?
She struggled with it. He had allowed the family fortunes to fall so low that she and Jane were required to sacrifice their own happiness so that the family might be rescued! Was it forgivable?
She fell asleep before she could decide.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The next day, Miss de Bourgh arrived promptly at two, as she had promised. Surprisingly, though, she asked Mary if Mrs. Jenkinson might remain at the parsonage. “With three people, it is too crowded for comfort,” she explained.
Mrs. Jenkinson looked uncomfortable with this, but Miss de Bourgh was quite firm, and so Mrs. Jenkinson remained behind at Collins Cottage, and Elizabeth and Miss de Bourgh went off at a nice clip in the phaeton.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Miss de Bourgh said. “What a relief to be rid of her!”
“You do not like her, then?” Elizabeth queried.
“She is too clingy by far, and when she is with me, I am never allowed to drive fast!” With that, she cracked her light whip in the air and the two horses sprang forward. Elizabeth clutched onto the sides of the phaeton, but could not help shouting with glee.
“I knew you would be fun, I knew it!” Miss de Bourgh yelled out.
“I am glad I could accommodate you,” Elizabeth said, laughing, as she tied her bonnet strings tighter.
“And do you know,” Anne went on. “I am allowed to go to Hunsford with Mrs. Jenkinson, but am not permitted to spend as much as a shilling of my pin money! What is pin money for, if not to be spent on fripperies?”
“Truly? You are not permitted to buy anything?” Elizabeth was quite surprised.
“Books! I am allowed to buy books, but nothing else! Not so much as a shawl or a bonnet, let alone a gown, which is why I am dressed in horrid things like this.”
“I am sorry, Miss de Bourgh,” Elizabeth replied. “I rather envied you, when I first saw Rosings Park, but now…well, it does sound like a rather dull life.”
“Dull! Dull indeed, until you came! I beg you to call me Anne, and allow me to call you Elizabeth,” Miss de Bourgh said, hands clasped at her chest.
“Of course, Anne. Or Lizzy, as my family does.”
“I so want you to be my friend. You see, I have no friends here,” Anne confessed. “Mother does not allow me to associate with people she considers our social inferiors, and so…” She shrugged.
“I would be delighted to be your friend; but I am your social inferior, am I not?” Elizabeth said.
“You are the daughter of a landed gentleman, so in that we are equal. You have no title, neither do I.”
“Oh; your father was a knight,” Elizabeth realised.
“Yes; my mother’s title is a courtesy title, as she is the daughter of an Earl. So not quite as grand as she makes out, though my father’s estate, as you saw, is everything elegant.”
“It is certainly the most beautiful home I have ever seen,” Elizabeth said, honestly. “Aside from Buckingham Palace, of course!”
“Oh! You have been to London?”
“Certainly,” Elizabeth said.
“Certainly! Ha! As if everyone has had such an opportunity! I would doanythingto go, I really would!”
“Would your husband not take you?” Elizabeth saw her chance and took it without hesitation.
“Husband?”
