Hey everyone! So sorry it's been so long between posts. Anyways, hope you enjoy my first ever Jane Austen fic! I would like to thank my lovely beta's for editing this story for me! You guys rock! Anyways, enjoy.

~Cissa


I've always been the accomplished one. I started playing the piano forte when I was five, practicing for hours every day so I could attain perfection. I started singing when I was seven to add even more to my musical performance. When I was ten I began to spend time in my father's library reading and making extracts in order to increase my knowledge of the world. Being from a poor family we couldn't afford to have a governess for me and my four sisters, and therefore never got a good education. Reading was the only way I could learn things about the world and improve my mind.

Despite all my hard work and effort I was still overshadowed by my sisters. Jane was the most beautiful girl in the world and the sweetest person you'll ever meet. She never thought ill of anyone and was admired everywhere she went. Elizabeth was also beautiful and had a wit and vivacity that drew many a man to her. Kitty and Lydia were the liveliest girls you'd ever meet and were favorites amongst the officers and our mother.

I was neither a beauty nor lively. I was simply me and most people paid me no mind. For I while I really didn't mind. I was just happy being the accomplished, smart young lady I was. I felt sure that there would be some man out there who would appreciate my accomplishments and look at what's inside of me. There would be some man out there who could ignore the beauty of my sisters and recognize the genius that was me. Then he came into my life…

Mr. Collins was everything I had ever hoped for. He was a respectable clergyman, intelligent, and had the patroneage of the noble Lady Catherine. I thought he was perfect and had hardly known him a fortnight before I was deeply in love with him. I thought he was different from other men who had been beguiled by my sisters' beauty. I though he would look on the inside of me and love me for my accomplishments. How wrong I was.

Apparently when he entered the house he immediately fell for Jane, but of course my mother would never allow that. He then set his sights for Lizzie and the rest was history. He fell in love with her beauty, her wit, her vivacity, just as Mr. Darcy had done before him. When he proposed to her my heart was broken. I spent the day crying in my room. If only I had not!

If only I had stayed and heard her refusal. If only I had run after him when he had his heart broken. If only I had declared my feelings to him before Charlotte Collins stole him away from me forever. If only, if only…

It is said that the two worst words in the English language are if only. If you spend your life thinking about what might have been, you will forget to move forward and make something of your life. I am determined not to do this. I will get over him! I will conquer this!

I am doomed now to be an old maid, to be ever overshadowed by my sisters' brilliant marriages, to be the odd one out. I will be the one forgotten, the one overlooked, nothing special. My name will never be spoken with love and admiration. I am forced to be a burden the my parents and to endure their disappointment every day of my life. When I am gone I will be gone forever, nobody will speak of me.

My name is Mary Bennett, and I am the other Bennett girl.