The second week of their return was the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the young ladies in the neighbourhood were in the lowest of spirits. Only the older Misses Bennet were still able to eat, drink and sleep, and to continue the usual course of their lives. Very frequently they were charged with heartlessness by Kitty and Lydia, whose own unhappiness was extreme.

'Heavens! What will become of us?' they would often cry in bitterness. 'How can you be smiling so, Lizzy?' Their fond mother shared all their unhappiness. She remembered what she had suffered on a similar occasion in her youth.

'I am sure,' she said, 'that I cried for two days when Colonel Millar's regiment went away. I thought that my heart would break.'

'I am sure that mine will break,' said Lydia.

'If only we could go to Brighton,' said Mrs Bennet.

'Oh, yes! But Father is so disagreeable.'

Such were the complaints continually repeated at Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be amused by them, but all sense of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt once more the justice of Mr Darcy's criticisms, and she had never been so ready to pardon his part in the affairs of his friend.

But the darkness of Lydia's future was lightened shortly afterwards. She received an invitation from Mrs Forster, the wife of the colonel of the regiment, to go with her to Brighton. This friend was a young woman, and very recently married.

The joy of Lydia on this occasion, the pleasure of Mrs Bennet, and the jealous anger of Kitty, are hardly to be described. Without any concern for her sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless excitement, calling for everybody's congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever, while the luckless Kitty continued to complain.

'I cannot see why Mrs Forster did not ask me as well as Lydia,' she said, 'I have just as much right to be asked as she has, and more, too, because I am two years older.'

Elizabeth tried to make her more reasonable, and Jane urged her to bear her disappointment quietly, but without success. As for Elizabeth herself, she considered this invitation as the deathblow to any possibility of common sense in Lydia, and, though such an act would make her hated if it became known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her go. She suggested to him the probability of Lydia's being even more foolish with such a companion at Brighton, where the opportunities for silliness must be greater than at home.