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E lizabeth took her letter and walked out to a large shade tree behind the chicken house.Plopping down on the ground, she opened the envelope and devoured every word on the page.

Elizabeth,

Please, don’t be alarmed on receiving this letter. I have no desire to continue any part of the disagreement in which we found ourselves the other evening. I hesitate to say anything further to upset you, but I must be allowed to answer the charges you laid at my door.

The first accusation was that I separated my friend Charles from your sister, regardless of the feelings of either of them.

The second was that I willfully and cruelly sent away the man who claimed to be my brother-in-law, and thus destroyed my sister’s marriage.

The second charge is more grievous than the first, but I think I must explain both.

The explanations, particularly as regards your sister, may bring you additional pain. For that, I can only apologize.

It was not long after your sister began working at Netherfield’s Dry Goods that I became aware of Bingley’s interest in her.

He talked incessantly of her beauty, her good sense, and her pleasant personality.

But it was not until the holiday party at Netherfield Hall that I suspected any attachment beyond his typical flirtation.

After you and I danced together, I happened to overhear two “gentlemen”—and I use the word loosely—gossiping like old women about Bingley’s supposed escapades with your sister.

I will not offend you further by telling you what was said.

Rest assured, I set them straight. But I was concerned for my friend, because in a small town like this, a scandal—even a rumor of one—could hurt not only his reputation but also his livelihood as a business owner.

As I mentioned to you before, Bingley often fancies himself in love with some woman, only to find that his feelings are either not returned or have cooled after a brief separation.

After watching your sister’s interactions with Bingley, I concluded that this time was no different.

She demonstrated no feelings for Charles, not in her speech nor in her facial expressions.

As you said, though, your knowledge of her is undoubtedly superior to mine.

Therefore, I may have been wrong about her, and if so, I am sorry for it.

Still, their separation was most likely for the best.

Shortly after the holiday party, Charles asked my opinion about opening the new store in Glasgow.

As it is his hometown, and the opportunity seemed to be a good one, I advised him to take advantage of it.

He often turns to me for advice of this sort.

His business decisions are usually quite sound, but he lacks the confidence in himself that comes with age and experience and so seeks confirmation from a trusted friend.

I don’t think living with his aunts helps that situation much.

There is but one piece of the counsel I gave him that day that bothers me, and that is that I advised him not to hire your sister to manage the new store.

That may have cost her an increase in income, and given what I so recently discovered regarding the financial struggles of your family, I may have done her a disservice.

Again, if so, I apologize, but there is nothing to be done about it now.

This brings me to another matter—my attitude toward your family.

You, Jane, and Mary have always conducted yourselves as ladies, and for that you should both be respected.

For some reason that I cannot fathom, you seem to have the idea that I do not have a very high opinion of you.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I would not have married you if I did not value your mind and spirit.

But I have at times been dismayed at the lack of decorum demonstrated by your younger sisters and your mother.

It has the unfortunate effect of discomfiting most people who are subjected to it, me included.

Your father, while well-spoken and mannerly on his own, refuses to check their speech and behavior, and I find this difficult to overlook.

I’m sorry to offend you, but that is the situation as I see it.

Now, with respect to one George Wickham, I have considerably more to say.

You have accused me of separating him from my sister and nieces, basically breaking up a family, simply because I didn’t approve of the man’s vocation, or lack of it.

I know not what he has told you about the situation, so I can’t speak to any specific accusation he has made.

Therefore, the best way to proceed is probably to lay before you the entire story.

This is most painful for me, and I would ask for your discretion in not relating these events to anyone else, as they concern my sister and her children.

Georgiana, as you know, is about seven years my junior.

She was very young when our mother died and relatively young when our father passed.

At the tender age of twenty-one, I became, for all intents and purposes, a parent to her.

It was an almost overwhelming responsibility, and if I am honest, one of the reasons I considered marrying Anne de Bourgh.

I was concerned about raising Georgiana properly on my own.

After my father passed away, I scouted around and found a well-respected boarding school in the Nashville area called Ramsgate Academy.

Georgiana did well, after a brief adjustment period, although she did at times admit to being lonely.

I encouraged her to persevere, and for a while it seemed as though she had.

When she was seventeen years old, her letters became more and more infrequent, and then one day, I got a phone call from the school saying she had disappeared.

I was frantic. The police were contacted, and I immediately left for Nashville in order to try and discover what had happened to her.

A search of her room revealed a letter, addressed to me, stating that she had fallen in love and was going to elope with a young man named George Whitman.

She insisted that I should not worry, that she was safe and happily married, and she would contact me as soon as they were settled.

The police investigation basically ended at that point—a man who seduces young girls and convinces them to run off with him is apparently not as compelling a threat to society as bank robbers and such.

I continued searching for her on my own, but weeks and months went by, and I never heard from Georgiana, except for a card at Christmas time.

When I tried to find her at the return address on the card, she was no longer living there.

I felt like I had failed her, and my mother and father too.

It was almost more than I could bear. Richard was a stalwart adviser for me during this ordeal.

His friendship probably kept me from losing my sanity.

Then, about four years after she had disappeared, Georgiana suddenly returned home with the girls.

Ruth was about six weeks old at the time.

I was overjoyed to see her, but the three of them were in sad shape.

They were shabbily dressed and malnourished.

Georgiana was frightfully thin, and anemic, as it turned out.

Maggie had begun to talk a few months earlier, Gi said, but now she refused to say a word.

The poor little thing was absolutely terrified of me.

After seeing to their basic needs, I finally succeeded in getting Georgiana to tell me what had happened to her.

After she and that man left Nashville, they went to Batesville, Indiana.

He told her he had obtained work in a shoe retail shop, but once they arrived, the job was no longer available.

According to Georgiana, he did try to find work and take care of her for a few months, but after a while, she realized that he would never be able to hold any kind of steady job.

Being trusting and na?ve, she had been unable to discern before they were married that he was a drunk—a drunk who also had a gambling habit.

Over time, he developed a tendency to strike her when he was inebriated.

Because he was continually out of work, they moved from place to place.

How they lived, I know not. But somehow, they ended up in Springfield, Illinois, where she delivered Ruth.

When the baby was about a month old, Georgiana said the police came to the door one afternoon looking for her husband.

They said they had a warrant for his arrest: charges of violation of the Volstead Act, theft by deception, and—to her horror—bigamy.

Apparently, George Whitman was actually George Wickham of Valparaiso, Indiana.

Mr. Wickham had left a wife and four children fending for themselves in another state.

Several days later, when Wickham returned, Georgiana confronted him, and an argument ensued.

His tendency toward violence had been escalating, but up until that point, his abuse had always been confined to Georgiana.

She confided to me that, in her misery, she mistakenly believed she deserved that fate, because of her rebelliousness in running away from school.

But on this particular evening, when Maggie began to cry in response to the angry voices, the monster struck her too.

That, combined with the shame that she was, in essence, an unmarried mother of two, living with another woman’s husband, finally convinced Gi she had to get out.

After he left the house, she gathered the barest necessities and ran to a neighbor’s, a kindly older couple who had befriended her.

I shall be eternally thankful to them, because they gave her the money to take the train back home to safety.