Mama wanted to know all about my friends at Cambridge when I went home for a few days. I was surprised to find her unwell, but as she lay on the sofa, I told her about the men of all types, the hard-riding countrymen with their well-worn boots and ill-fitting coats; the studious men with their abstracted air and their boots on the wrong feet; the wild men with their whoops and their drunkenness; and the dandies in their breeches that never wrinkle and their diamond tiepins.
She asked me about Fitzwilliam, and if I was still friends with him, and what he did at Cambridge. I told her that he was aloof, that he did not mix freely with the other men, that he had no taste for the drunks or the countrymen, and that he was unimpressed with the dandies’ wealth. Mama said that she was not surprised, for he has seen far more ostentation at Leighford Castle, where he goes to stay with his Fitzwilliam cousins, than even Cambridge can muster.
I have never been invited there, despite my best efforts, but I live in hope that I may one day cross the threshold. There are two daughters, both unmarried, and although their parents would not approve of me as a son-in-law, the daughters are, by all accounts, headstrong. And when has a parents’ disapproval ever stopped a headstrong girl from doing anything?