Darcy sighed. "She refused me. Then I behaved very badly afterwards."
Bingley absorbed this information with admirable seriousness.
"How badly?"
"Badly enough."
"That is not a useful measure."
Bingley considered the matter for some distance. "You know," he said eventually, "if Miss Bennet refused me tomorrow, I should be entirely wretched."
"I do not doubt it."
"I should wander about looking tragic. I should neglect my correspondence. I might even lose interest in dinner."
"I do doubt that."
"Perhaps not dinner," Bingley conceded. "But certainly luncheon."
Darcy shook his head.
"My point is that I should still wish to see her the following day."
"That sounds suspiciously like persistence."
"No. Persistence is attempting to alter somebody's mind. I should merely wish to be in the same room."
Bingley shoved his hands into his pockets and continued. "You make everything into a question of success or failure. As though human beings were contracts to be negotiated. She refused your proposal. Very well. That is unfortunate. But unless she also requested that you leave Dorset immediately and never return, there remains a great deal of territory between those two positions."
Darcy looked at him. "You are absurd."
"I am optimistic."
"You are meddling."
"I am your friend."
Unfortunately there was no sensible response to that.
By the time they reached the other end of town, Bingley appeared convinced the situation remained entirely recoverable. Darcy remained equally convinced that it did not. Neither succeeded in altering the other's opinion.
???
At the guesthouse, breakfast was already underway.Mrs Bennet was holding forth on curtains. This was not, in itself, remarkable. Mrs Bennet had always possessed strong opinions on domestic matters. What struck Elizabeth, seated beside Jane with her coffee growing cold in front of her, was the animation with which those opinions were now delivered. Her mother had one hand wrapped around a teacup and the other moving expressively through the air as she explained to Georgiana the fundamental difficulties of decorating with green.
"The trouble," she was saying, "is that people become uncertain. They cannot decide whether they wish to be green or beige and end up acquiring the disadvantages of both. If a thing is to be green it ought to commit itself properly."
Mrs Makepeace nodded approvingly from the sideboard. "Mr Makepeace, God rest him, once painted an entire room mustardyellow because he believed it looked cheerful. We lived with the consequences for seven years."
Jane laughed softly.
Elizabeth found herself smiling despite the persistent confusion that had occupied her thoughts since the previous evening. Darcy was absent. His absence ought to have been a relief. Instead she found herself glancing occasionally towards the door and becoming annoyed every time it failed to open.
After breakfast Miss Darcy drifted into the passage with a letter in her hands. Elizabeth followed a few minutes later and found her standing by the window.
"Miss Darcy."
She looked up.
