A letter can be refused a first reading, but not a second, or a tenth. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 36 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth walks the lane for two hours with Mr. Darcy’s letter and argues herself, sentence by sentence, out of everything she was sure of.

She begins determined to disbelieve, reading with a strong prejudice against every line. But the Wickham account will not stay false. Set his charm against the facts, his stories against his conduct, and the gross duplicity lands on the other man. And with Wickham fallen, her treasured first impressions collapse in order, one after the next.

• Elizabeth weighs what she actually knows of Wickham: nothing but his own testimony, delivered to a stranger at a card party, and his boasted fearlessness of Darcy from a man who skipped the Netherfield ball.
• The proof stands out painfully: an affair of such delicacy as the Georgiana secret would never be invented where one word from Colonel Fitzwilliam could destroy it.
• The self-reckoning arrives whole: she has been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd; vanity, not love, has been her folly; till this moment, she never knew herself.
• Hardest of all, the letter’s account of her family will not be argued with either, and the justice of the charge against mother, sisters, and even father strikes her more forcibly than ever. She returns to the parsonage to learn both gentlemen called to say goodbye while she was gone.