The ball is over and the real conversation begins. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 4 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, in which Jane and Elizabeth compare notes in private and the narrator quietly takes the measure of the whole Netherfield party.

Jane confesses her admiration of Bingley: sensible, good-humoured, lively, everything a young man ought to be. Elizabeth approves the choice and teases the chooser, since Jane has never yet met anybody she could not like. The chapter then crosses the county line to size up the other side: the Bingley sisters' fashionable contempt, the trade origins of the family fortune, and the odd, sturdy friendship between an open-tempered man and his exacting friend.

• Jane praises Bingley's manners and character; Elizabeth adds that he is also handsome, which a young man ought li ...