Introducing Mrs. Collins
My dear Charlotte,
I do hope that your visit to your friend has provided you with succour and that you feel ready to soon return home, refreshed and healed.
To bear witness to a marriage, even a marriage that has been censured by many, is a blessing, and I trust the Darcys are grateful for your presence there, which will have added considerably to the happiness and the respectability of the occasion.
All is well here. Mrs Brooke is doing more than usual to make up for any household duties of yours that lay derelict. I am requested to pass on good wishes from the following:
Brooke sent her ‘warmest wishes’;
Colonel Raeworth, whom I saw at church, said you were ‘much missed’;
Anne de Bourgh, whom I saw also at church, which is rare, sent you her ‘fondest regards’, which was unexpected;
And finally, Mr Smithson sends his ‘best wishes’ and suggests you return as soon as may be, for your community needs you, which I thought was thoughtful.
Mr Smithson has proven to be a real boon here in Hunsford.
The parishioners like him a great deal, and I confess I sometimes feel envious of how easy he is with them.
I personally do not like his style of sermon; it is rather informal and plain-speaking; it suggests to the congregation that he is their friend, which is misleading and will confuse them.
However, they seem to respond well to it, so on the occasions when he leads the service, I need not worry that my flock will be despondent. Quite the opposite.
Smithson has visited me at the parsonage most days.
We get along famously, and he has joined me once in a visit to Rosings, in which, I must observe, he was wont to dominate the conversation with Lady Catherine.
But such a connection is, to him, still a novelty, and therefore I can understand that he cannot temper his enthusiasm.
She seems to respond well to him also, which, I will confess only to you, my dearest, also sparks the faint beginnings of jealousy in me.
But I know that such feelings are beneath me, and thus, I endeavour to tamp them down firmly, as if pushing unwanted items into the back of a cupboard, so that they are unseen day to day.
Although, considering it now, perhaps it would be more prudent to rid oneself of unwelcome items rather than keeping them in a cupboard, where one may accidently discover them one day when searching for a fresh handkerchief.
(A metaphorical handkerchief, you understand.) I shall think on this further.
I have missed you a great deal. The house is rather cold without you here (not literally cold, for Brooke is keeping the fire well stocked, as I mentioned earlier). There is a quietness that I have not grown used to and do not care for. Also, your dahlias have died.
Come home soon please.
Your ever-loving husband,
William