Page 72 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“No.” Miss Bingley stirred her tea. “No, I am sure. You have always had such sweetness of judgement. A little romantic, perhaps. A little too ready to think well of everyone. But sweetness is never a fault.”

“I must disagree with you. Even sweetness, in excess, may be a fault in one’s character,” said Jane.

Mrs. Hurst stopped stirring.

Elizabeth took a piece of seed cake, the better to enjoy the scene playing out before her.

“I beg your pardon?” said Miss Bingley.

“I only mean that sweetness ought not be allowed to make one blind.”

There was a short silence.

Mrs. Hurst recovered first, perhaps because she had risked the least. “Very true,” she said, though her tone suggested that this truth was rather unwelcome.

Miss Bingley set down her spoon. Then she looked at Jane with a different expression altogether. Less soft. More alert. “I see,” she said.

Elizabeth doubted that she did, but it was interesting that she wished to.

“And there is nothing,” Miss Bingley continued, more carefully, “no circumstance, no misunderstanding, nothing that might, with time, perhaps soften⁠—”

“Nothing will change, if that is your question.”

“That is not my question,” said Miss Bingley. She appeared startled to hear herself admit there was one.

Elizabeth perceived that neither lady had arrived with a question at all. They had come quite certain of the story, which was that their brother had behaved handsomely by sparing Jane as much mortification as possible, and that it was their own persistent disapprobation that had at last restored Mr. Bingley to sense.

But Jane’s calm admission had overturned every comfortable part of that tale. She had ended the acquaintance; she did not resent their brother; in fact, she wished him well. Worst of all, she was being so sincerely kind that neither sister could discover whether she ought to be pitied, blamed, or feared.

“Of course,” Miss Bingley said, with a strained laugh, “one cannot help but wonder—dear Miss Bennet, you will forgive me, we were almost sisters—whatever can have induced you?”

“Induced me?” Jane asked.

“Charles is amiability itself. He has five thousand a year, Netherfield for the present, and every likelihood of purchasing a permanent estate in time. His manners are pleasing, his temper kind. One cannot help wondering what objection you could possibly have to⁠—”

She caught herself.

Mrs. Hurst made a small noise. Whether it was an agreement or a slight disorder of the stomach, Elizabeth could not say.

Miss Bingley produced another brittle laugh and smoothed the edge of her glove. “But I daresay young ladies have their reasons.”

“Yes,” said Jane. “I daresay they have.”

Miss Bingley waited.

Jane lifted the plate. “Will you have some cake?”

The true grievance was all too clear, for it went against Miss Bingley’s belief in her own superiority that Jane would not have her brother. The natural order of her world had been overturned, and Jane would not even quarrel with her about it.

It was, Elizabeth thought, a masterpiece.

Mrs. Hurst finally had something to say. “I suppose, now that circumstances are altered, you will hardly be so much at Lady Anne Darcy’s little evenings.”

“Yes,” said her sister, “that is a pity. You had begun to be quite a fixture.”

At that moment the maid came in with the afternoon post on a tray, and Elizabeth would remember the timing of it all her life.

As her aunt was out and Jane was occupied with the tea, the tray was presented to Elizabeth. The letter on the top was addressed to Aunt Gardiner and herself in a decided, elegant hand. Elizabeth opened it because it was addressed to them both, marked with the day, and because some instinct suggested that she would be sorry not to have done so in Miss Bingley’s presence.