Epilogue
Miss Georgiana Darcy arrived in Hertfordshire shortly before Mr. Bingley's Christmas ball and attached herself to Elizabeth almost from the first hour they met.
Thereafter, the two were scarcely out of each other's company, and Elizabeth treated her with all the affection of a beloved sister.
By the time Georgiana departed for London in January, she declared the visit the happiest she had enjoyed in many years, and Darcy privately believed his sister had at last found the companion she had long desired.
Three days before Christmas, Mr. Bingley secured Mr. Bennet's consent and proposed to Jane, who accepted him with all the quiet happiness that had always distinguished her.
Mrs. Bennet scarcely spoke of anything else for weeks afterward.
That her eldest daughter was to marry the master of Netherfield delighted her beyond measure.
That her second daughter was openly courted by Mr. Darcy at the same time convinced her that Longbourn had become the most fortunate house in Hertfordshire.
Faithful to the promise he had made Elizabeth, and after considerable consultation with his solicitor, Darcy pursued no criminal complaint against Mrs. Vane, George Wickham, or Mrs. Younge.
Mrs. Vane, however, confessed far more than anyone had expected.
Her statement exposed a network of willing accomplices that had quietly sustained her campaign against the Darcys for years.
Among them were Mr. Grey's former clerk, servants who had once worked upon Darcy lands, paid rumor-mongers, and men within London's commercial circles who had knowingly spread falsehoods for payment or advantage.
She further admitted that she had long known of the Kingsleys' friendship with the Darcy family and had prevailed upon a mutual acquaintance to secure invitations for both herself and Darcy to the same ball.
After five years spent laboring in the shadows against his reputation, she confessed she had wished, at least once, to observe him amidst his own society and judge for herself how deeply her efforts had taken root.
She admitted to taking particular satisfaction in witnessing Lady Catherine, whose attendance that evening had been entirely coincidental, address her nephew with little warmth or indulgence before others.
To Mrs. Vane, it confirmed that she had been successful in her plot.
After her confession, Mrs. Vane withdrew quietly to her home in Buxton. Though she and the Darcys never became friends, no further word of schemes or intrigues ever reached them from her quarters.
Mrs. Younge vanished almost entirely from public notice. Rumor maintained that she had departed England for the Americas, though no reliable account ever confirmed her destination.
George Wickham enjoyed his freedom for scarcely a year.
Mrs. Vane refused to pay either him or Mrs. Younge the balance she had promised, leaving him once more to depend upon his own devices.
Bereft of patronage, dismissed from the militia after his conduct became widely known, and unable to outrun his creditors indefinitely, he soon returned to his former habits.
The last trustworthy report placed him within the walls of the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison.
Darcy's reputation, so long assailed by whispers and malicious invention, gradually recovered.
His marriage to Elizabeth silenced many who had once declared him cursed, while Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mr. Gardiner, Mr. Grey, and Lord and Lady Matlock each employed their influence to correct the more outrageous tales.
Mrs. Vane's confession exposed the network through which the falsehoods had been spread, dismantling the very machinery that had sustained the rumors for so many years.
In time, the scandal itself became little more than an old piece of gossip, recalled chiefly by those who delighted in repeating stories long after they had ceased to be true.
When the Darcys visited Netherfield toward the close of 1812, they learned that Mr. Bingley was already in negotiations to purchase the estate outright.
Declaring Hertfordshire entirely suited to his own tastes, and wishing his wife to remain near her family, he saw no reason to seek another residence.
Whatever objections his sisters ventured upon the subject were received with good humor and very little attention.
Upon returning to Pemberley after their wedding journey, Darcy undertook one final unpleasant duty.
Wickham's confession had revealed that two long-serving members of his household had accepted payment in exchange for supplying information concerning the family.
Their dismissal was immediate. Though Darcy regretted the betrayal, he preferred painful honesty to comfortable deception, and Pemberley prospered all the better for it.
Two years later, blessed with a son of their own and a goddaughter through the Bingleys, few who beheld the Darcys together could imagine the trials that had once threatened their happiness.
Those who remembered the long campaign against Darcy's reputation now remarked that no couple in Derbyshire seemed more perfectly suited.
Elizabeth and Darcy themselves sometimes reflected upon the falsehoods that had once sought to keep them apart, marveling that truth, constancy, and steadfast love had prevailed at last. Surrounded by family, faithful friends, and the quiet happiness that springs from mutual trust, they discovered that peace, once so fiercely contested, was all the sweeter for having been so dearly won.