Chapter XLI — Pride and Prejudice

You can see catastrophe clearly, plead with authority, and still be dismissed with a joke. The regiment's last days in Meryton bring universal grief except from Elizabeth and Jane, who eat and sleep while Kitty and Lydia wail for Brighton. Elizabeth feels shame and anew the justice of Darcy's objections to her family.

Mrs. Forster invites Lydia to Brighton with the regiment; rapture fills the house while Kitty mourns being left behind. Elizabeth sees the invitation as the death-warrant of Lydia's common sense and secretly urges her father to refuse, naming general disgrace, fixed character at sixteen, and Kitty following Lydia into folly. Mr. Bennet jokes that lovers were not lost, then shrugs that Lydia must expose herself in some public place and Brighton with Colonel Forster is the cheapest stage for it. He will not check her; Elizabeth leaves disappointed but confident she has done her duty.

Lydia fantasizes Brighton streets covered with officers and herself flirting with six at once beneath a scarlet tent, ignorant of Elizabeth's warning. On the regiment's last day Wickham dines at Longbourn and renews his gallantry; Elizabeth represses him, mentions Rosings, and says Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance before clarifying she means his disposition is better understood. Wickham's alarm confirms her revised judgment; they part with civility and mutual wish not to meet again. Lydia departs with Mrs. Forster in clamorous joy while her sisters' gentler adieus go unheard.