Epilogue

Now at last Lady Catherine de Bourgh could plan her own daughter's wedding and upon moving into the newly erected dowager's house at Rosings, close to the main road where she could sit comfortably at her window and observe the people passing by, she had nothing more to wish for than a house full of grandchildren and the occasional visit from Mr. and Mrs. Darcy.

With some delight, she observed that, when Miss Anne de Bourgh became Mrs. Fitzwilliam, all three of the brides who had married six months ago were expecting. Oh, what advice she would be able to give all of them!

Mrs. Hurst and Mrs. Wickham were completely reconciled soon, and even Mr. Hurst had to admit that his sister in law was, after all, not so wholly bad once she had steered her energy in another direction than catching a rich husband. With Wickham he once in a while played at cards, but never to an extent that it would ruin either of them.

One evening, as the Hurst's sat in their elegant sitting room in the fashionable part of town, the lady remarked to her husband that after all, a bit of intrigue seemed to be fairly harmless. At this, her spouse startled and cautiously and with a wary expression warned her, that only in a book of romance this would always be so, but never in life.

"Oh, but I only want to intrigue you, George," she replied smiling. "You know, my dear, I believe in all our marriage I have never told you that I love you. But you must know, that I do, and very much so."

That night, the unruly Mr. Hurst turned into a romantic and the result was quite charming in more than one sense of meaning as it lay there in its cradle some nine months later.

And as for the Wickhams, we already know they are doing well. How else could it be with the lady's determination and her husband's charms? And it is needless to say, that Lady Catherine's advice turned out to be a most precious one and was followed most zealously.

The end.