Elizabeth expected the introduction some day soon. She did not expect it before lunch. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 44 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in which Georgiana Darcy is brought to the Lambton inn the very morning she reaches Pemberley, and the Gardiners begin drawing conclusions.

Georgiana proves the opposite of her reputation: not proud but painfully shy, tall, womanly, and gentle, with sense and good humour glimpsed through the embarrassment. Bingley follows on her heels, warm and unaffected as ever, and in his careful questions about the family at Longbourn Elizabeth hears something that pleases her even more than his kindness.

• The speed of the visit says everything: brother and sister wait on Elizabeth within hours of Georgiana’s arrival, an attention the Gardiners know how to read.
• Bingley’s memory betrays him beautifully: it is above eight months, he says, since he had the pleasure, not since the twenty-sixth of November, when they were all dancing together at Netherfield.
• Watching Darcy with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth tallies the change: no haughtiness, no disdain of his company, but a wish to be actually acquainted with the relations he once catalogued as objections.
• An invitation to dine at Pemberley is given and accepted, and Elizabeth lies awake at Lambton trying to name what she now feels for its owner: not hatred, not mere respect, but gratitude, and real interest in his welfare.