#middlemarch #davidcopperfield #themillonthefloss @bethfreed25
Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are now married with a son and prepare to host their annual ball at their country mansion Pemberley. Among the guests are upright Colonel Fitzwilliam and young radical lawyer Henry Alveston, both love rivals for Darcy's sister Georgiana. Whilst walking in the woods Elizabeth sees a mysterious woman, said to be local ghost Mrs Riley but this is forgotten as she welcomes her guests, including her parents. Younger sister Lydia and her feckless husband Wickham have not been invited but Lydia makes a dramatic entrance, announcing that Wickham has argued with his friend Denny in the woods. Two shots ring out and a search party finds Wickham bloodied and drunk and Denny beaten to death though Wickham denies killing him. Nonetheless unpopular magistrate Hardcastle arrests Wickham to charge him with murder. After they have gone Darcy tells Elizabeth that years earlier Hardcastle sentenced to death a young poacher, whose mother hung herself in grief, the mother being Mrs Riley, whose ghost is said to appear to harbinger bad news.
