Chapter LV — Pride and Prejudice

Obvious matchmaking finally works, and the sister who helped everyone else gets her win while you cheer without one of your own. Darcy has gone to London for ten days; Bingley calls alone in high spirits, dines elsewhere that night, and accepts Mrs. Bennet's invitation for tomorrow. She runs upstairs half-dressed, hangs Kitty, and later winks Elizabeth and Catherine out of the room with "Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you" so Jane and Bingley can be left alone. The first evening fails; before he leaves he is engaged to shoot with Mr. Bennet next morning.

When Elizabeth returns from writing a letter she finds Jane and Bingley over the hearth, engaged. Jane is the happiest creature in the world; Bingley wins Mr. Bennet's dry blessing about complying tempers and exceeding income; Mrs. Bennet forgets Wickham and Lydia and talks of nothing else. Elizabeth rejoices that Darcy's anxious circumspection and his sisters' contrivance have ended happily, and she acts as confidante to both lovers in the hours they are apart.

Jane hears Bingley was ignorant of her being in town last spring, the sisters' doing, not his neglect. Jane wishes Elizabeth as happy; Elizabeth deflects with forty such men and another Mr. Collins. Mrs. Bennet whispers the news through Meryton, and neighbours who marked the family for misfortune after Lydia's flight now call them the luckiest in the world.