Indeed, from some remark which Lydia let slip about Darcy being at the wedding, Elizabeth soon began to think that it was only due to outside efforts that Mrs. Wickham had succeeded in getting her own husband.

An application for information which she made to her Aunt Gardiner confirmed this suspicion.  Darcy, it seems, had hurried up to London immediately on hearing of the elopement; and he it was who, thanks to his knowledge of Wickham’s previous history, found out where Lydia and he were lodging, and by dint of paying his debts to the tune of a thousand pounds, buying his commission, and settling another thousand pounds on Lydia, persuaded him to make her an honest woman.  That is to say, thought Elizabeth, Darcy had met, frequently met, reasoned with, persuaded, and finally bribed the man whom he always most wished to avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce.  Meantime, Bingley, accompanied by Darcy, made his reappearance at Netherfield Park and at the Bennets’; and Elizabeth had the mortification of seeing her mother welcome the former with the greatest effusiveness, and treat the latter coldly and almost resentfully.  “Any friend of Mr. Bingley’s will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him,” said Mrs. Bennet, as she watched the two men approaching the house to pay their first visit.

Despite, however, rather than by reason of, this surfeit of amiability on the part of the mother, the lovers quickly came to an understanding, and this, strangely enough, in the absence of Darcy, who had gone up to town.  It was in Darcy’s absence, also, that Lady Catherine de Bourgh came over to Longbourn, and helped to bring about what she most ardently wished to prevent by making an unsuccessful demand on Elizabeth that she should promise not to accept Darcy for a husband, and by then reporting to him that Elizabeth had refused to give such a promise.  The natural result followed.  Elizabeth mustered up courage one day to thank Darcy for all he had done for Lydia; and this subject soon led him to affirm that in that matter he had thought only of Elizabeth, and to renew—­and to renew successfully—­his former proposals of marriage.  When Mrs. Bennet first heard the great news she sat quite still, and unable to utter a syllable; and at first even Jane and her father were almost incredulous of the engagement, because they had seen practically nothing of the courtship.  But in the end they were all convinced, and Mr. Bennet’s decisive comment was:  “I admire all my three sons-in-law highly.  Wickham, perhaps, is my favourite; but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane’s.  If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.”

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Northanger Abbey