Page 98 of The Crown’s Gift

"I believe she saw."

"Then deny it if asked."

Afterward Mary came to her father.

"Was it dreadful?"

"Yes. I suffered through every measure."

She smiled. "Papa."

"You were brave. More importantly, you were prepared."

"Lizzy waited two years for me."

"She did."

"I think I would have managed without her today."

Sir Thomas understood the gift within the statement. "That is what she hoped."

Mary did not acquire a suitor by the end of the concert, nor did she require one to complete the chapter of her life. A thoughtful young barrister named Mr Avery asked about her composition and spoke to her for ten minutes without praising Lady Catherine, but Mary mentioned him only once and then discussed a modulation she wished to revise.

Two afternoons later, Mr Nathaniel Avery called at Brook Street with his widowed sister, Mrs Bell. Lady Bennet received them in the drawing room with Sir Thomas, Elizabeth, and Georgiana present. Mary entered carrying corrected pages from the concert and stopped when she saw him.

"I hope the printer did not injure the modulation," Mr Avery said after the first civilities.

Mary sat opposite him. "The printer was innocent. I changed it because the first ending arrived too easily."

"Most people prefer an easy ending."

"Only when it has been earned." Mary glanced toward the score. "Music knows when a resolution is false, even if an audience applauds."

Mr Avery did not answer with praise. He asked what made a resolution honest. Their discussion moved from harmony to his work in Chancery, where elegant arguments sometimes concealed unfair results. Mary asked whether law could hear a quiet person when a louder one controlled the room.

"Not reliably," he admitted. "That is one reason I listen for what has not been said."

Georgiana looked at Mary and smiled. Mr Avery noticed the exchange but did not demand its meaning. Before leaving, he asked Sir Thomas whether he might call again when the family was next in London. He also asked Mary whether she wished him to bring the pamphlet on composers' publishing rights he had mentioned.

"Yes," Mary said. Then, more firmly, "I should like to read it."

Kitty's drawing improved under a London master. Her portrait of Lady Bennet captured both movement and affection so well that Sir Thomas hung it in Netherfield's front hall.

"Everyone will see me with my mouth open," Lady Bennet complained.

"You were speaking," Kitty said.

"I am always speaking. You might choose a kinder moment."

Yet she showed the portrait to every visitor.

Lydia remained under Miss Harwood for another year by agreement rather than punishment. She joined Colonel Forster's wife in organizing winter baskets for soldiers' families and discovered that officers' coats did not make cold rooms warmer or hungry children fed.

"Mrs Forster says I have a talent for persuading shopkeepers to donate," she told Sir Thomas.

"They surrender to end the conversation."

"The baskets are full either way."