A Gentleman's Daughter

The visitor arrives uninvited, refuses refreshment, and demands a private walk with Austen's Elizabeth. Chapters fifty-three through fifty-six hold an engagement and an ambush, and Sadie Stein takes them in order. Bingley returns after nearly a year, does everything correctly, and gets his happy ending; Stein weighs that proper, chaperoned love against whatever it is Elizabeth and Darcy have built out of quarrels and secrets, and the comparison refuses to behave. Then Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whom Stein ranks as the book's second villain, comes to extract a promise, and Elizabeth declines to give it, at length, on her feet. Stein enjoys the scene the way Austen plainly did.