Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 54: Opposite Ends of the Table

A dinner party can be a battlefield where nobody moves. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 54 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, in which Mrs. Bennet's table plan does what Lady Catherine never could: it keeps Darcy and Elizabeth entirely apart for an evening.

Bingley is seated by Jane, where old habits resume so visibly that Elizabeth stops worrying about that courtship entirely. Her own luck runs the other way: Darcy is placed beside her mother, at almost the greatest distance the table allows, and the one conversation Elizabeth needs cannot happen across a room full of company.

• Watching Bingley and Jane, Elizabeth calls it settled in everything but the asking, and even Mr. Bennet's dinner guests can see which way Netherfield is tending.
• Darcy and Mrs. Bennet get through their neighboring seats on stiff mutual endurance, neither suspecting how much gratitude the arrangement is strangling.
• At coffee, Elizabeth waits for her chance, and a determined young lady plants herself close by, whispering about officers, so the chance dies at the tea-table.
• Alone afterward, the sisters trade reports: Jane, insisting once more that she is perfectly easy about Mr. Bingley and can meet him as an indifferent acquaintance, is informed she is very cruel, letting nobody else smile about it while smiling so much herself.