Hell was not fire and brimstone with legions of demons poking at you with their pitchforks. No, hell was being trapped for an eternity in a persona without a personality, without personal contact, without acknowledgment as a person. Sentenced for all time to be Miss Carruthers without even a Christian name, serving a mistress living a half century in the past, condemned to an unvarying routine, day after day, week after week, month after month. The despair engendered by the horrible prospect of continuing year after year with no end in sight was almost too much to bear. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

That was the conclusion of Miss Elizabeth Bennet after ten months servitude at Quickentree Hall.

She had no one to talk to. Oh, there were people she could speak to: Mr. and Mrs. Smithers, Mr. and Mrs. Greaves, Polly, her maid, other servants, the proprietor of the circulating library; speak that is of the weather, the weather, and of course, the weather. She longed to talk of books, art, science, politics, the war, even agriculture – with her father, with her Uncle Gardiner, and … with Mr. Darcy. Oh, the debates she had had with him at Netherfield. She had styled them as arguments then, thinking she was wounding him with her jabbing wit, but she realized, conceded, that they had been great fun, so much so that she had even taken sides opposite to what she really believed, just to prolong them. At Rosings he had even teased her about it, telling his cousin that she took great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact were not her own. Unlike her father, and even her uncle, who occasionally treated some of the opinions she expressed with a whiff of condescension akin to Dr. Johnson's comment re a woman preaching, Mr. Darcy never had. He had always treated her as an equal, at least intellectually; she could have been one of his fellow students, debating with him in the common room of their college at Cambridge (not that the dons would ever let her be there); he had treated every proposition she threw at him with perhaps more seriousness than it was due. No, that was not true; he had riposted every witty parry of hers with a bon mot of his own. It was dangerous to think of those exhilarating debates; inevitably when she quit smiling to herself, she would sigh, and have a hard time swallowing the chagrin that arose because of her own stupidity – she would never debate Mr. Darcy again.

There was also a conversation of a type that Elizabeth missed which she, a self-proclaimed bluestocking, would never, ever acknowledge she missed. Conversation was perhaps too mild a term for the oral maelstrom that swirled through the Longbourn drawing room the afternoon after an assembly; six Bennet ladies, perhaps supplemented with an aunt, or a Lucas or two, all talking at once in glorious discordancy. Oh, how she missed the triumvirate of gossip – her mother, Aunt Philips, and Lady Lucas; Lydia's braggadocio; Kitty's modishness; Mary's ponderance; Jane's demureness; Charlotte's wryness; all boiling together while she stirred the pot with her wit. But again, as it was with contemplation of Mr. Darcy, to dwell on those happy memories was madness. She had turned her back on her family and there was no turning back. Wishes were not horses, beggars would not ride, and neither would she.

Elizabeth had no friends, not that there was any opportunity to make any. She had no idea what society there was beyond the gates of Quickentree Hall as she never any chance to meet anyone out there in the greater world. And the servants of Quickentree Hall were not friendly; they were correct but cool. She tried to be friendly with them. She was not unmindful of her charm, and she used it as best she could, but to no effect. It took Polly, her maid, to point out the obvious to her – the servants had no interest in investing any warm feelings in a Miss Carruthers who was there today and gone tomorrow.

Three times Elizabeth wrote out the notice required to terminate her position as companion to the Dowager Countess of Jeltotford. Three times Elizabeth slept on her decision, and three times she awoke to a determination to tough it out for the balance of the full year complete and collect the bonus. The fourth time she had had enough she took care not to date or sign the notice. The next morning, she looked at the notice and then put it away in the top drawer of the desk in her bedroom, there to be called upon if needed.

It was shortly after her epiphany regarding the true nature of perdition that Elizabeth was given something to think about other than the slow, oh so slow, completion of the full year complete. At dinner that night, the true dinner, not the faux dinner she endured with the Dowager Countess, Smithers announced that the Earl of Jeltotford had put up Quickentree Hall for sale. He reminded Elizabeth that the estate had always been meant to finance dowries for the earl's daughters and as it appeared they were both to be married during the upcoming season, the time for a sale was now. In answer to her anticipated question, he told her that the Dowager Countess, along with her and the nurses, would be moved to the dower house at the earl's estate of Roundtree Abbey, in Yorkshire. Elizabeth thought to herself that if the sale took place past the completion of the full year complete, she would not be moving to Yorkshire.

After the announcement of a possible sale and move nothing much happened until just before Lady Day. On her afternoon break Elizabeth found a veritable army of women (it seemed that Mrs. Smithers had pressed every available tenant's wife and daughter into her company of maids) dusting, washing, waxing, and polishing. A prospective purchaser was coming to view the estate. He was bringing a surveyor and a steward to assist him. He would be there in two days time and would stay for three days carrying out a very through inspection. Elizabeth need not worry, he would not interfere with her duties, she would hardly notice he was there. So she was told.