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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Why wouldn't Col. Fitzwilliam propose? Why was he waiting for her by himself? For what purpose?[/quote]

The obvious reason was that he wanted to say good-bye. If she hadn't married Darcy, there was no reason to think Fitzwilliam would ever see her again. Yes, he would visit his aunt deBurgh and she might visit Mrs. Collins, but there was no reason to expect their visits to overlap.

However, I think another reason might be implied--pure speculation on my part. In the last one on one conversation he had with Lizzie, he tells her how Darcy has been instrumental in stopping a friend of his from an unfortunate marriage. When Lizzie asks the Colonel what the objection to the match was he says something about the young lady having some unsuitable relations. Lizzie guesses that Bingley is the young man, and her uncles Philips and Gardiner are the unsuitable relations.

This comes up later when Darcy proposes to Lizzie. In his rather uncharitable proposal he says he wants to marry her despite her lowly relatives. When she says she won't marry him and gives his interference in the match between Bingley and Jane as a reason why, Darcy says something like "Yes, I was kinder to him than to myself." He admits the interference and is proud of it. In the letter he later delivers to Lizzie, he explains that it isn't so much the social status of her relatives, but the utter impropriety of her mother and younger sister, and occasionally her father that made him think it was a bad match for Bingley..

In any event, when Fitzwilliam explains Darcy's objections to the match to Lizzie, without knowing it is her sister Jane and her family who are involved, he approves of Darcy's interference. Lizzie gets very upset and goes back to the Collins' cottage. As far as I can remember, Lizzie and the Colonel never have another one on one conversation.

He may simply not have wanted their acquaintance to end on that note. He knows he has upset her. Now, if the Colonel thought Darcy's objections to Jane's marriage to Bingley were valid, he certainly would have thought the same objections would be valid if applied to his own marriage to Lizzie.

Remember that Darcy writes to his aunt deBurgh to tell her of his engagement to Lizzie and for a while this causes an estrangement from his aunt. It doesn't really matter to Darcy; he is wealthy and has a home of his own. But Fitzwilliam was not independently wealthy and could not afford to antagonize his aunt, who in effect gave him free room and board when he wasn't off with the military.

Oh, and for everyone who says Gardiner is a barrister, he is a tradesman, who lived "within sight of his own factories" in London. And Uncle Philips is a solicitor, NOT a barrister and in England at the time there was a huge divide between a solicitor and barrister. I think it's Caroline Bingley who makes a crack about this --I think to Darcy--that his ancestors who were prominent judges were "in the same line of work" as Lizzie's uncle. She's being sarcastic. It would be kind of like saying the lawyers who advertise on TV for accident victims are "in the same line of work" as Supreme Court justices.[/quote]

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