As I watched with Isobel by his bedside, awaiting the doctor summoned in haste from London, the Earl gave forth a great moan, rose up shuddering from his sheets, and clutched his wife's hand. “Blackguards!” his shattered voice cried. “They would take me from within!” Then he fell back insensible upon his bed, and spoke no more.

Isobel was all efficiency; a compress she had in a moment, and ministered to her troubled lord, and the violence of feeling that had animated his poor body but an instant before, troubled him not again.

I am no stranger to death — I have sat watch over too many unlovely ends by the side of my clergyman father, who believes the company of a woman necessary to sustain him in the most mortal hours of his ministry — but this was a sort of dying I had never witnessed.

A chill draught wafted through the chamber door from the great hall below. I turned my head swiftly, in hope of the doctor, and saw only Marguerite, Isobel's maid.

“Milady,” the Creole girl whispered, her eyes stealing from her mistress's face to the more dreadful one of the Earl, “the doctor is come.” Her countenance was pale and frightened, and as I watched, she made the Papist sign of the cross hurriedly at her brow, and ducked back through the doorway.

I cannot find it in me to scold the maid for such foolishness. She is a simple girl from Isobel's native Barbadoes, who accompanied her mistress upon Isobel's removal to England two years ago. Marguerite has sorely missed her sleep tonight — it was she who fetched me hastily before dawn to the Countess's side. But even I, a child of coldblooded England less susceptible to horrified fancy, must confess to sleeplessness these several hours past. For the Earl has uttered such moans and cries that none may shut out his agony, and all within Scargrave's walls are robbed of peace this night.

“Lady Scargrave,” the physician said, breaking into my thoughts. He clicked his heels together and bowed in Isobel's direction. A young man, with all his urgency upon his face.

“Dr. Pettigrew,” the Countess replied faintly, her hand going to her throat, “thank God you are come.”

How Isobel could bear it! Married but three months, and to lose a husband one has but lately acquired would seem the cruellest blow of Fate. Yet still she stood, composed and upright, and waited with the terrible fortitude of women for the result of so much misery.

Dr. Pettigrew glanced at me and nodded, brushing the snow from his greatcoat and handing it to Marguerite, who bobbed a frightened curtsey and ducked out of the chamber. As the physician hastened to the Earl's bedside, I strove to read his thoughts; but his eyes were hidden behind spectacles, and his mouth held firmly in a line, and I could divine nothing from his youthful countenance. He reached for the Earl's wrist, and poor Lord Scargrave moaned and tossed upon his pillow.

“Leave us now, my dear Jane,” Isobel said, her hand cool upon my cheek; “I will come to you when I may.”

AND SO I MUST WAIT AS WELL, SHUT UP IN MY HIGH-ceilinged chamber with the massive mahogany bed, the walls hung with tapestries in the fashion of the last century. I draw my knees to my chest and pull my dressing gown tight to my toes, staring for the thousandth time at the face of some Scargrave ancestress, forever young and coquettish and consumptively pale, who peers at me from her place above the mantel. It is a solemn room, a room to terrify a child and sober a maid; a room well-suited to my present mood. The fire is burned low and glowing red; my candle casts but a dim light, flickering in the still air as though swept by sightless wings — the Angel of Death, perhaps, hovering over the great house. At my arrival, Isobel told me of the Scargrave legend: When any of the family is doomed to die, the shade of the First Earl walks the gallery beyond my door in evening dress and sombre carriage. The family spectre might well be pacing the boards tonight, however little I would believe in him.

And through the snowy dawn, a faint echo of pealing bells; they toll nine times as I listen, straining for the count — the passing bell from the church in Scargrave Close, calling out that the Earl is in his final hours. Nine peals for the dying of a man, and then a pause; the toll resumes, a total of forty-eight times, for every year of the Earl's life. I shiver of a sudden and reach for my paper and pen, the pot of ink I carry always among my things. Much has happened in the two days since my arrival here at Scargrave; much is surely to come. It may help to pass the small hours of morning if I record some memory of them here.

I AM COME TO SCARGRAVE MANOR IN THE LAST MONTH of the dying year at the invitation of its mistress, Isobel Payne, Countess of Scargrave, with whom I have been intimate these eighteen months. When I recall our first meeting — an introduction between ladies still unwed, in the Bath Pump Room — I cannot help but wonder at the present reversal of events. Isobel, with her gay humour and careless aspect, so early blessed by fortune in the form of the Earl, now to be made a creature of misery and loss! She, who is all goodness, all generosity! It is not to be borne. Though I have known her but a little while, I would do all in my power tonight to succour her in despair — so lovely, and so wounded, is she. I owe the Countess my gratitude as well as esteem. I know too well how little attention she need pay me in her present high estate. A watering place such as Bath encourages ready acquaintance — acquaintance as readily dropt, once the sojourn is done. But Isobel would have it that I am a singular personality, and that once understood, I am not easily put aside. However that may be, she has spurned the ready affections of her husband's fashionable friends, and proved faithful to her own, more modest ones; many a letter have I written and received, and confidences shared, in the short time we two have called each other by our Christian names [5].

The Countess is returned from her wedding trip but a fortnight, having married Frederick, Lord Scargrave, three months past and departed immediately for the Continent. Her husband, the Earl, being determined to give a ball in her honour, Isobel begged me to make another of the party — and that I had powerful reasons for finding comfort in her goodness I will not deny. A visit to Scargrave promised some welcome diversions — an agreeable partner or two, and in the frivolity of the dance, some measure of forgetfulness for the appalling social errors I had knowingly committed among friends not a fortnight before. Never mind that the Earl's Manor would be the third home I had visited in as many weeks; there are times when to be in the bosom of one's family is a burden too great to bear, and relative strangers may prove as balm.

Thus I went into Hertfordshire fleeing, in short, a broken engagement and the awkward pity of those dearest to me in the world. I hoped only to find a woman's light dissipation: to talk of millinery and the neighbours with equal parts savagery and indifference, to take my full measure of wintry walks, to see in the New Year in the company of a dear friend lately married. I had no hopes of brilliant conversation, or of being surrounded by those who might challenge my wits; I looked, in fact, for the reverse of what has always been strongest in my nature.

My journey from Bath in the Scargrave carriage was marked by no intimation of pending tragedy; no dark shadows menaced as the horses laboured through the snowy Park, pulling up with steaming breath before the Manor's massive oak doors. Only warmth and welcome shone from the many windows set in the house's broad stone facade — a cheerful aspect on a winter's twilight, offering rest and sustenance to all who came within its walls. I may fairly say that I descended from the carriage without the slightest flutter of misgiving.