The Zephyr

The Zephyr

Author: Grace Gibson Listening Length: 8h 17m
Historical Read Online

You are looking at the last man on earth who should ever find himself making love to a lady behind an old hay wain and offering her a clandestine promise upon some nameless day. And yet here I am. WHEN MR FITZWILLIAM DARCY RETURNS to Hertfordshire a year after last seeing Elizabeth Bennet, he is surprised to find that ...

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Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A HOST OF ACCOMPLICES

T he rank senselessness of the female condition, or rather my rude initiation to my legal standing in the world, invigorated me, and with my senses considerably sharpened, I went upstairs. After glancing behind me to assure no one had seen me, I crept into the little room in which I had hidden Mary King, only to find her soundly asleep.

I picked up her soiled dress and undergarments from the chair while she slept on silently and with a profundity that struck me, for she must not have rested with the consciousness of general safety for a very long time. She did not feel herself to be in danger for once, and almost against my will, I softened considerably more than I already had towards her. She was no longer so much a nuisance as she was representative of a cause—that of fairness and a symbolic protest against the fact that our society was not built to protect her in any reasonable way.