12 — A Midsummer FancyFrom Fitzwilliam Darcy to Elizabeth Darcy
Nr 12, Berkeley Sqr
London
August 26
My Dearest Mrs. Darcy Mother Goose, OSG Lady Swan,
I see.
I am indeed no gander but a goose, though yet no father, as you have shown me. I have never been so happy to show myself a fool.
I might blame my folly upon Lady Malkin’s hints concerning Augustina’s paternity, yet in truth the mistake is mine alone, and was already established before she began to play upon my fears. The timing of her pregnancy with Augustina came so hard on the period of our own liaisons that I can say that my mistake was natural, and does make me wonder whether she might have deliberately resumed her intimacies with her husband so as to make me mistake so — or perhaps to cover her own putative shame, should
