Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 43: Of This Place I Might Have Been Mistress

The road climbs through Pemberley Woods, the trees break, and there it is. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 43 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the Pemberley chapter, in which Elizabeth tours the home of the man she refused and then, against every assurance, meets him on his own lawn.

The house is handsome without being showy, the grounds beautiful without artifice, and Elizabeth's thought arrives unbidden: of this place she might have been mistress. Then the housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, begins to talk, and the portrait she paints of her master matches nothing Meryton ever believed.

• Mrs. Reynolds's testimony is the kind money cannot buy: the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world, grown into the best landlord and the best master that ever lived, with never a cross word from him in her life.
• Asked about the young man in the miniature beside Darcy's, she is briefer: Mr. Wickham has turned out very wild.
• Walking the grounds, the party meets the owner himself, home a day early; Elizabeth burns with embarrassment, and Darcy astonishes her with gentle, unmistakably deliberate civility.
• He asks to be introduced to her aunt and uncle from Cheapside and invites Mr. Gardiner to fish his trout stream; before parting he asks something more, whether she will allow him to present his sister to her, and Elizabeth rides back to Lambton not knowing what to think.