Chapter 2: No Shadow at the Meryton Assembly

The Meryton assembly rooms had been opened, aired, polished, and decorated with a thoroughness that suggested the neighbourhood considered the occasion militarily significant, which in several respects it was.

Mrs. Hartwell had spent the preceding three days in a state of productive agitation that expressed itself in the rearrangement of her daughters' wardrobes, a series of increasingly urgent consultations with Mrs. Long, and one prolonged tactical discussion with Mrs. Philips that had concluded, apparently, in a unanimous resolution regarding the inadvisability of allowing Mrs. Goulding to secure an introduction first. The result of these preparations was that the Hartwell party arrived at the assembly rooms at an hour that was, Cecilia observed, precisely calculated to be neither embarrassingly early nor strategically late — the matrimonial equivalent of a military flanking position.

"You look very well tonight, Cecilia," Lydia said, adjusting her own gloves with the serenity of a woman who had no doubt on that subject regarding herself. "The blue is a great improvement on that grey thing."