The regiment's last week in Meryton is a season of mourning for Kitty and Lydia, until an invitation changes everything for exactly one of them. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 41 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, in which Lydia gets her Brighton after all and Elizabeth loses the argument that mattered most.

Mrs. Forster, the colonel's young wife, invites Lydia as her particular friend, and Longbourn divides on the news: Lydia in ecstasies, Kitty inconsolable at the injustice, Mrs. Bennet delighted, and Elizabeth so alarmed that she breaks confidence enough to beg her father in private to keep Lydia home. He hears her out, and takes the easier road.

• Elizabeth's warning is blunt for a daughter: Lydia's wild volatility and disdain of restraint, loosed in a camp full of officers, risk making her the most determ ...