Down the staircase, quiet and composed, came Charlotte Collins, holding her youngest daughter, Eliza, by the hand. “My dear Mr. Collins,” she said. “Whatever can be the matter? Are the pigs in the garden yet again?”

Under her calm gaze, Mr. Collins stopped his fidgeting and tried to straighten his cravat. But he could not hold back his news without exploding.

“Mrs. Collins, the most delightful news. Longbourn is ours at last!”

There could be only one explanation.

“Oh, Mr. Collins,” said Charlotte. “Has Mr. Bennet died? Dear me, so very sad for Mrs. Bennet and the family. And my poor Elizabeth, how she will be grieved.”

Feeling her quiet reproof, Mr. Collins flushed. He endeavored to control his elation and put on a more respectful expression. It was his duty, after all, to mourn for his cousin, however much his instincts urged him to wave his arms and caper.

Fifteen years of marriage had changed them both. Mr. Collins was a pear-shaped man, with a tonsure of pink scalp surrounded by thinning hair. His figure, like his brain, was layered with suet, and his self-esteem had grown with his waistline. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s continued patronage (until her death two years previously) had made him sufficiently prosperous; despite the arrival over the years of five children, the Collinses lived comfortably. But always at the back of his mind and the forefront of his dreams had been his prospects: he was heir to the estate of Longbourn. He would inherit on the death of Mr. Bennet, father of Charlotte’s dear friend Elizabeth, married some twelve years to Mr. Darcy of Pemberley, nephew to Lady Catherine. As each year was added to Mr. Bennet’s age, so did Mr. Collins’s longing increase.

And now Mr. Bennet was dead.

Charlotte Collins, forty-two, and the mother of five living children, was also fuller in the figure than when she and Elizabeth Bennet sat out together at assemblies. The tight lacing that accompanied the present fashion for full-skirted gowns constricted her waist and emphasized her matronly bust and hips. Under the muslin cap, the wings of sleek brown hair worn over her ears were lightly touched with silver.The hair was twisted into a large braided knot at the back of her head in a variation of a style becoming fashionable in imitation of the young Queen Victoria, newly come to the throne; Charlotte did not aspire to ringlets. The lines on her face showed that pain and worry had not been strangers; but it was a calm face, and a decided one. Her eyes showed patience, and her lips closed firmly together (as if there were much she did not say); her chin was tucked back with resolution. She had, in the words of the old saying, “made her bed” when she chose to marry Mr. Collins, and she had slept in it for fifteen uphill years. It had not been a bed of roses, but Charlotte was not one to repine. She endured her thorns as best she could, and cultivated her flowers. She governed her small kingdom efficiently and well, and found enjoyment still in many things. Her smile, as she tended her children and went about her housewifely duties, was infrequent but sweet. And her laugh, when she played with her smallest daughter, Eliza, was still young.

And here it is necessary, dear Reader, that I offer you some account of the main events of Charlotte’s life since her marriage. Her first child, a large boy, was born a year after her marriage (a ‘young olive-branch,’ as Mr. Collins called him, when writing to Mr. Bennet). The boy was christened William Rosings Collins, a combination of what Mr. Collins felt was his due and of homage to Lady Catherine. Even at birth, he was the type of baby that can best be described as aggressively legitimate. In both face and form he resembled his father and, as he grew, the resemblance became still more pronounced. Mr. Collins was noisily proud of him.William became a heavy, non-athletic boy of limited intelligence but good conceit, assertive at the dinner table, timid away from it. His father, naturally, intended him for the Church.

Charlotte’s next child, born two years later, was also a boy ( Jonathan Lucas Collins), but he came from a different mold. He was slight in stature and not handsome, but he inherited his grandfather Lucas’s social nature and his mother’s intelligence. Jonathan was a merry soul, loving to his mother and friendly to all the world. (William, of course, was inclined to bully him.) Charlotte was too wise to favor Jonathan, but her eyes smiled when she looked at him.

The following year, Charlotte miscarried.

Two girls came next, Catherine and Anne Maria, two years apart. They were a dull and dutiful duo, with their mother’s coloring and their father’s brains. Catherine, in looks, was considered a fine girl; Anne (compared with her sister) was musical. Then came another miscarriage. Charlotte was low in health and spirits for some time, but her fifth living child, another girl, christened Elizabeth Jane, was a changeling. She was born prematurely after a difficult pregnancy and reared with a quiet desperation by Charlotte that withstood her husband’s petty importunities and Lady Catherine’s recommendation to put the sickly baby out with a good wet-nurse and stop neglecting her parish duties (by which she meant dining at Rosings on command).

Elizabeth Jane, known at home as Little Eliza, grew to delight her mother’s heart. From some errant gene (from the Bennet connection, shall we say?), Eliza developed an impish sense of humor. She was small and in looks resembled her mother, gray-eyed and brown-haired, in no way striking. But her love of life illuminated her face; she drew the eye. As soon as she could walk, she tried to dance. Catty and Annie, as her sisters were known, united in trying to suppress her, but in vain.William ignored her, but Jonathan was her protector and her friend.

Two more babies, boys, followed with the passing of time, a year apart. Both died within the year, of the flux. Charlotte had no more children.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh succumbed to a stroke, brought on by excessive self-esteem and a carefully hidden fondness for port wine (taken, of course, medicinally). She spent six months in bed before she died, unable to walk and barely able to talk, imposing her will on her house with constant thumps on the floor of a stout, silver-topped walking stick that had belonged to her late husband.When too frustrated, she was inclined to strike out at the nearest body, in a way reminiscent, if she had but known, of Mr. Collins’s late father. At her death, Rosings, her estate, passed under the family trust to her daughter, Anne.

Shortly after her mother’s death, Anne married. She was then in her late thirties. Her husband was a former Archdeacon of Marchester (he resigned the post on his marriage), and also a noted organist. He was a man considerably her senior, long known to the de Bourghs. Anne retained the de Bourgh name, and the Venerable Mr. Crabapple acted as prince consort to his pale, delicate, middle-aged lady. Never having been beautiful, disappointed in the failure of her mother’s scheme to marry her to her handsome cousin, Mr. Darcy, Anne de Bourgh took to piety and won herself a husband through good works and Church attendance. His fondness for the architecture of Rosings was also a factor. Mr. Crabapple won Miss de Bourgh by his kind and fatherly demeanor (in such contrast to the well-meaning but smothering tyranny of her mother), and his masterly organ-playing. An instrument was installed at Rosings, and the rooms rang with the strains of Bach and Handel. The housekeeper, Mrs. Jenkinson, formerly Anne de Bourgh’s companion (in whose sitting-room long before Elizabeth Bennet had been bidden to practice), kept her door firmly closed.

Rosings thereafter hosted a steady stream of bishops, missionaries, deans, rural deans, rectors, vicars, and aspiring curates, together with their wives and offspring. All this was not to Mr. Collins’s liking. He felt continually over-watched, his sermons criticized, and his habits weighed in the balance.

But Mr. Bennet was dead at last, and his estate, entailed as it was (to Mrs. Bennet’s oft-voiced disgust), passed to Mr. Collins.

Mr. Bennet had died quietly of heart failure, one summer evening, alone in the library he loved.When he was found, his fingers were still caught between the pages of a book. While his heir gloated, Mrs. Bennet indulged in strong hysterics, and his daughters mourned.

Mr. Collins was agog to make the move to Longbourn. Now he could escape from the Anglican backbiting and religious infighting of his Rosings neighbors, give up his parish duties, and live the life of a country gentleman, for which he felt eminently suited. He began to talk casually of huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’. He considered for at least a week buying a sporting dog, though dogs of all kinds brought on violent attacks of sneezing; he would never have one in the house, though Jonathan and Eliza begged. Charlotte, with a tact born of her affection for Elizabeth Darcy, curbed her husband’s impatience to move to Longbourn.

“My dear Mr. Collins, this will not do. Think of Mrs. Bennet’s distress if we descend upon her with her husband barely in his grave. You, with your natural kindness and condescension, will be the first to understand her feelings and I know, in your generosity, you will give her time to plan her future life.”

Her method of dealing with Mr. Collins was always to ascribe to him the principles and virtues she wished he possessed. By tactics such as this, she could often persuade and guide him to a high standard of public behavior.

How was Mrs. Bennet to be settled? That was the question. Mary and Kitty, who had lived together in Meryton since the death of Kitty’s clergyman husband, Theodore Philpott, only two years after their marriage, conferred over their teacups with Mrs. Philips, who was also now a widow and in very comfortable circumstances. Mr. Philips’s business affairs had prospered (his specialty was conveyancing) and, when he died, of apoplexy, he was a warm man. Mary Bennet had married her Uncle Philips’s senior clerk, a kind but homely man of the name of Shrubsole, and Mr. Shrubsole had taken over much of Mr. Phillips’s clientele on his death and was making a comfortable living.