With Jane upstairs ill, Elizabeth is now a houseguest in the enemy camp. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 8 of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: an evening in the Netherfield drawing-room where the conversation is elegant and the knives are out.

The moment Elizabeth leaves the room, the Bingley sisters marvel at her wild appearance, her blowsy hair, and a petticoat six inches deep in mud. Bingley saw nothing but a face improved by exercise, and Darcy admits the walk brightened her eyes. The sisters then aim lower, at an uncle near Cheapside, and Darcy agrees that such connections must very materially lessen the Bennet girls’ chances of marrying men of any consideration.

• Caroline pronounces Elizabeth’s cross-country walk an abominable display of conceited independence, then invites Darcy to agree that it has dimmed his admiration; he declines the opening.
• Bingley shrugs off the low relations: if the girls had uncles enough to fill all Cheapside, it would not make them one jot less agreeable.
• The famous accomplishments debate: Bingley’s list of painted tables and netted purses, Caroline’s catalogue of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, and Darcy’s final requirement, the improvement of the mind by extensive reading.
• Elizabeth declares she never saw such a woman as they describe and wonders at their knowing any, leaving Caroline to mutter about young ladies who recommend themselves by undervaluing their own sex.