When I returned to Longbourn an hour later, the house was eerily quiet. While the servants remained discreetly belowstairs, the members of my family had folded themselves behind closed doors, like black-feathered birds that sleep in the hidden depths of barns and attics. Lilting sobs haunted their way down the hall from Mama’s room, where my younger sisters took turns comforting our inconsolable mother. I looked in on Jane as I passed and spotted her and Lizzy sitting together on the bed, making, between their drooping brows and folded hands, a very pretty picture of impoverished maidenhood. Will no one pick these elegant flowers, though they grow in coarse and untidy fields?

All was still, as the house and its occupants considered the tiny drama which had unfolded that morning; the high-spirited comedy with its many strange and diverting characters had turned decidedly tragic, and not tragic in the way which is glorious and cathartic, with poisoned goblets, stilettos, and heroes lying soaked in their own blood. No, the tragedy that had visited Longbourn this morning was quiet and inglorious. My own embarrassing display at the Netherfield ball might never have occurred, for how trivial it now seemed. A decision had been made, and our childhood home, our estate of several generations, our crumbling but endearing little shelter with its peeling wallpaper and soiled carpets and furniture ruined by undrawn curtains and excessive sunshine—all of these things felt suddenly lost to us, as though we’d realized for the first time that the world we had always lived in was perched on a bank of sand, its erosion concurrent with the remaining years of my father’s life.

“Mary, if you will stand outside the door like that, you may as well come in,” Jane called out.

The first thing I did when I went in was touch Lizzy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” I said. I might have added, “I don’t blame you, Lizzy. Nobody could ever blame you for refusing Mr. Collins,” with appropriate sisterly ferocity, or “We kissed, you know, that day I went to go fetch the shoe-roses. In the rain, while kneeling together in the mud.” How might I have summoned the courage to divulge the latter? But I remained silent, and Lizzy, her own eyes puffy and waterlogged, only patted my wrist to show she appreciated my gesture.

“It’s fine, Mary,” she said. “I did dread it happening, but one just doesn’t take it seriously until it does. And even now, it seems a very big joke—laughable really, though I know it’s unkind to say so, especially to you. I know you liked him. He was your friend, and you seemed rather devoted to him in your funny way.”

“No, not really,” I said, and the reply, which had been uttered hastily, rang hollow to all our ears. Flushing, I looked out Jane’s window. The sky was bright enough to blind one’s eyes, and I stared and stared until my vision penetrated the clouds and all the colors mixed and thawed into a brilliant white that stretched before me like a passage between this world and the next. My face burned. I couldn’t remember a time when I had felt more ashamed.

I have heard Papa say that unrequited love, far from being a necessary evil, can actually do a man good. In recounting his youthful pursuits, he’d remarked that occasional rejection could work wonders in building out a man’s character. “I thought of it as medicine,” he cheerfully told us one evening after dinner. “To a gentleman who wishes to marry, it takes little more than a pretty face saying ‘No’ for him to conjure all the strength and means within his power in order to win her.” But a woman could not do the same. For a woman to chase a man was considered an insult to her character. A woman must be silent until she is approached. She can never be too guarded with her feelings. No wonder unrequited love is so hard on our sex, I thought, for it cannot empower or embolden us, and she who is rejected must alone suffer the humiliation for having indulged in dreams which were never her right to entertain.

Two uncomfortable days later, on Mr. Collins’s last evening at Longbourn, I discovered a letter propped up by a stack of books on my writing table. Recognizing the effeminate hand as belonging to my cousin, I tore it open and read the following note:

Dearest Cousin Mary,

As the time draws near for my departure (on this visit at least), I found that I could not leave for Hunsford without thanking you personally for your friendship and hospitality during my stay. (We will say nothing of why my visit has only been generally pleasant and not exhaustively so.) I have faithfully promised your mother that the subject of the unhappy and disappointing events which occurred on Wednesday will never broach my lips again so long as I live, though I allude to them now only to tell you, knowing your charitable nature will share in my triumph, that things are far from being as hopeless as they seem. My trials, in fact, have borne fruit, and this fruit, as I shall momentarily reveal to you, is sweeter for having been realized by a circuitous route. You will pardon me for being unusually candid in this matter, but it is a serious one—on top of which, I do not believe in bestowing gratitude and credit where none are due. Therefore, I will refrain from expressing any thanks to your sister for my present condition of felicity, as I am confident that she deserves none and may yet regret the decision she has made. But we shall say no more on this awkward subject out of respect for your good parents and yourself. Suffice it to say that I am a happier man for the acceptance I have received from quite another—and, I daresay, equally deserving and elegant—hand.

I must entreat you to keep both the news of my engagement and the identity of the lady to yourself for the present time, though it won’t be long that you shall have to bear the burden of this secrecy. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that Sir William Lucas will pay a visit to Longbourn tomorrow to deliver the news—yes, Sir William Lucas, and your intelligence will not, I hope, fail you now in determining by this vital clue the name of my bride-to-be. I am, by her parents’ enthusiastic consent, engaged to Miss Charlotte Lucas, and I have every faith that Lady Catherine and Miss Anne de Bourgh will welcome her with open arms into our small but distinguished community at Hunsford. Even now, I am astonished by the blessing of finding so much beauty and grace in a single woman; I cannot think it fair that I am the sole recipient of all the joy to be had in the world. And as a close friend to my dear Charlotte, you would undoubtedly be the first to agree that she is in every way possible perfectly suited for the role which awaits her and will run my modest household admirably well, making, as Lady Catherine tastefully put it to me in the days before I set off for Longbourn, “a small income go a good way.”

Destiny would prevent us being brother and sister by marriage, though you can be certain in your heart that you are no less dear to me as a friend than if you were my younger sister by blood. I hope therefore that you may be as happy for me in my choice of marriage as I am for myself. Trust that I shall always remember the many kindnesses you paid me during my visit to Longbourn—these are memories that Time itself is powerless to efface—and that I speak in earnest when I wish you equal joy in finding a partner as worthy of your innumerable virtues and talents as I have done.

Respectfully yours,

Mr. William Collins

Sometimes the pattern of life is circular, and one ends up exactly where one has started. The sky was still dark when Mr. Collins set off in a noisy curricle for Hunsford. In the drawing room, a great fire blazed in the hearth and melted the last fragments of “The Last Rose of Summer” in its many rippling tongues. Soon the sound of the horses gave way to the sound of my thoughts. I thought of shoe-roses and mud. I remembered two bodies drenched in rain, water tingling down their necks like the wandering trace of a lover’s finger. I remembered a kiss impetuously stolen, and I promised the ghostly reflection which stared solemnly at me from the other side of the window that I would never fall in love again.