Two days after Mr. Bennet's return, an express arrives from Gracechurch Street, and Jane and Elizabeth run through the grounds to find their father. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 49 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, in which the fugitives are discovered at last and the rescue turns out to have a price nobody will name.

Mr. Gardiner writes that Lydia and Wickham are found, unmarried but willing: Wickham will make her his wife if Mr. Bennet guarantees her equal share of the five thousand pounds settled on the children, plus one hundred a year during his life. Terms so light stagger her father, who does the real arithmetic aloud: no man in his senses would marry Lydia for so trifling a temptation.

• Mr. Bennet's questions cut to the center at once: how much money has his brother-in-law laid down to bring this a ...