There was one occasion on which the Pemberley family indulged in some gadding about, for soon after the cousins' marriages, the Darcys accompanied the two young couples to London, and there they enjoyed the social season as fully as Jane could ever have desired. Fitzwilliam was not a part of the party on this occasion; having achieved his wishes of being taken by carriage and chair to attend the Newmarket races, to his fullest satisfaction, he was content to stay quietly at home with the Clarkes, and travel no more.
Without a care on her mind, therefore, Mrs. Darcy presented the two young married ladies at Court, in their bridal dresses, with myrtle and white roses in their hair; and if they whispered to one another about Queen Victoria's smallness and plainness, no one heard them. Jane had such a sweet smile from the girl who was so close to her in age, that she concluded that she was quite good-natured, and not proud at all, for a Queen. "I hope she will find someone to marry, and be as happy as we are," she earnestly told Cloe.
They did not see Bettina, either at the theatre or in the dashing drawing-rooms and sporting salons to which she was admitted; and if one or two ill-natured people asked if it was true that the actress was a relation, Mrs. Darcy replied in the affirmative with a distant blandness that soothed her uncomfortable niece. Bettina was successful, and prosperous; there was no winning her from her wicked ways, and Cloe only wished that she might not have as painful a decline as she felt she must eventually suffer. For herself, she rejoiced in every happiness, in her marriage to a man whose mind was so fully in concert with her own, that she hoped that they would be as happy a couple as her aunt and her husband had always been, and still were, even in the modern Victorian age that was opening upon Pemberley.
FINIS
Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma: A Sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Page 18