The post has been slow, and now Elizabeth knows why: two letters from Jane arrive at once, the first misdirected by a badly written address. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 46 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the hinge on which the third volume turns, and the worst hour of Elizabeth’s life to date.

The first letter’s postscript breaks the calm: Lydia has gone off from Brighton at midnight with Wickham, bound, it is hoped, for Gretna Green. The second destroys even that hope. Wickham was never going to Scotland; nothing has been heard of any marriage; and Jane begs Elizabeth home at once, with a plea that their uncle join the search in London.

• Colonel Forster’s inquiries trace the runaways to Clapham and then into London, a route with no Scotland in it, and Denny’s opinion completes the picture: Wickham never intended marriage at all.
• As Elizabeth rushes to find her uncle, Mr. Darcy walks in, and her state permits no discretion: she tells him everything, and her self-reproach pours out with it, for the silence that let Wickham stay a favourite.
• Darcy paces the room in grave meditation and takes his leave with quiet words of concern, and Elizabeth, reading his withdrawal in it, understands with perfect clarity, and at the worst possible moment, that she could have loved him.
• The Gardiners cut the tour short on the instant; within the hour it is settled, and the carriage turns toward Longbourn and whatever waits there.