Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 45: Miss Bingley Overplays Her Hand

Courtesy requires that a visit be returned, so Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner call on Miss Darcy at Pemberley. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 45 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a drawing-room skirmish in which the only person fighting is the one with the least to win.

Georgiana receives them with shy civility, Mrs. Annesley keeps the conversation breathing, and Caroline Bingley watches Elizabeth in jealous silence over the cold meat, cake, and finest fruits of the season. When Darcy joins them, Caroline can hold back no longer, and her chosen weapon wounds someone she never intended to touch.

• Caroline's sly thrust about the militia's removal from Meryton, meant to raise Wickham's ghost and Elizabeth's blushes, lands instead on Georgiana, who nearly planned an elopement with the man and cannot lift her eyes.
• Elizabeth's composed answer covers Georgiana's confusion, and Darcy's anxious glance between the two women confirms what Caroline suspects and dreads.
• The moment the guests are gone, Caroline audits Elizabeth's looks for the room: brown, coarse, grown thin, her face too sharp, her wit self-sufficient and intolerable.
• Darcy endures the catalogue in silence until provoked into the sentence that ends the campaign for good: it has been many months since he has considered Elizabeth Bennet one of the handsomest women of his acquaintance.