My brother went pale. I had spoken without consideration — and now regretted the callous words immeasurably. “Do not blame yourself, Neddie!” I cried hastily. “I would not have you to feel yourself in the slightest regard responsible. You acted as a reasonable man should always think best — and cannot have foreseen the outcome. We may yet discover, moreover, that Mr. Collingforth was killed by a common footpad.”

He did not reply, but sat staring at the small gilt table before him, as tho' he saw the dead Collingforth's ravaged face reflected in its surface. Lizzy went to him, and seized his hand; Henry looked at me speakingly, and I felt myself very much to blame. It is always Neddie's way to harbour his injuries, where the rest of us might find relief in a single outburst; and I knew, from the cast of my brother's countenance, that my unwitting blow had gone home.

“What shall you do, my love?” Lizzy gently enquired.

He turned to stare at her blankly, and seemed to emerge from reverie.

“Why — as to that, my dear, I believe I have done all that I can, as Jane so rightly observes. I have despatched a messenger to London, with a request of the magistrates for any intelligence regarding Mr. Collingforth's absent friend, Mr. Everett. I have ordered the constable at Deal to interrogate the captains still anchored in the Downs, in the hope of discovering whether Collingforth attempted to purchase a passage on Thursday night; and I have set another man on the trail of Mr. Grey.”

“Mr. Grey?” she exclaimed. “But Mr. Grey was gone to London on Thursday night!”

“—or so his housekeeper was informed,” Neddie sanguinely returned. His eyes met mine over the crown of his wife's head. “But I have had cause to wonder, my dear, if his midnight messenger was not from London, but rather a man sent by Mr. Pembroke of Deal, who detained his friend so long over a bottle in the privacy of his rooms. Such an interval might allow of communication with The Larches. Perhaps Mr. Pembroke thought to retrieve tenfold the passage money lent to Colling-forth, in a small service to Mr. Grey.”

IT WAS WELL AFTER NOON BY THE TIME NEDDIE'S recital was done. He took a small nuncheon, exchanged his soiled clothes for fresh, and rang for Pratt around the hour of one o'clock. Some moments later we set off for The Larches and our call of condolence, in a carriage closed against the final showers of rain. Lizzy was a picture of fashionable decorum — her dark grey dress a trifle warm for the season, but perfectly suited to mourning; and just elegant enough, with a latticework of black satin running about the bodice, and a trim of jet beads capping her white shoulder, to proclaim it only recently delivered from the modiste's. More black ribbon was twined among her auburn curls, and jet dangled from her ears. She had adopted a pert little illusion veil that slanted fetchingly over one eye, and her gloves were dove-grey lace.

For my own part, I had removed the traces of ash from my person; pinned up the straying fragments of my hair, and exchanged my very damp muslin for a dry one. The period of mourning undergone for my late father being so recently at an end, I boasted no less than three gowns suitable for the occasion — and detested every one of them. The sight of dusky cloth must always evoke the most painful memories. I spurned them all, and borrowed a lavender muslin from my sister's store, left behind when she removed to Goodnestone.

“How far is The Larches, Lizzy?” I enquired, as the chaise slowed to skirt a daunting puddle.

“Not above five miles, I should think. We might achieve it in half an hour. You shall like to revisit the neighbourhood, Jane — it is not far from Rowling, a place you always regarded with affection.”

Rowling! I had not thought of it in an age; it might be a word from my vanished girlhood, and to speak it again thrust me swiftly back in memory. It is a smallish house— little more than a cottage, in fact — that sits about a mile from Goodnestone Farm. Neddie and Elizabeth spent their earliest years at Rowling, before old Mrs. Knight made over Godmersham to Edward, and removed herself to White Friars. I had spent some weeks at Rowling when I was twenty; it was there I learned to admire Mr. Edward Taylor's beautiful dark eyes, and tried to forget the hazel ones of a certain Tom Lefroy. I had danced the Boulanger at Goodnestone Farm, and walked home in the dark under a borrowed umbrella. At Rowling I had begun my work upon Elinor and Marianne, and struggled with the burlesque of Susan. Such a place must always linger in memory as fondly as dear Steventon — the scene of youthful hopes and dreams. So many of them dashed.[47]

“How I wish that we might have time to walk around the garden,” I said wistfully.

“You shall have walking enough at The Larches,” Neddie reminded me. “There is not a finer showplace in Kent.”

“Particularly now that Mr. Sothey has had his way with it,” I observed.

We proceeded then in silence, for Lizzy was not of a disposition for idle chatter, and my brothers were too weary to keep their eyes from closing. Tho' I would have given much for their opinion of my morning's discoveries — the curious fact of Mr. Sothey's handwriting, on letters destroyed by the governess — I could not feel it wise to canvass the matter so soon. My own part in disturbing the ashes was suspect enough, and open to censure; but I hesitated to expose Anne Sharpe to the contempt of her employers. Lizzy should be unlikely to look with favour on a governess familiar with intrigue; she would not scruple to dismiss a woman whom she considered unsuitable for the instruction of her daughters; and that I might be the agent of Anne Sharpe's ruin, was more than I could bear.

I could conceive a perfectly innocent explanation for the entire matter. Anne Sharpe had been taken much into Society during her years with the Porter-mans, and it was not incredible that she should have met Sothey somewhere, and formed an attachment. Fortune being scant on either side, the two might have considered it imprudent to marry, and determined to separate. Miss Sharpe came to my sister, in the regrettable role of governess, while Mr. Sothey was left to barter his talent for the arrangement of landscape. The gentleman might quickly have thrown himself into new things, new acquaintance — including his affaire with Francoise Grey. Miss Sharpe's heart, however, may have proved unequal to her sense of duty.

She had borne with her disappointment tolerably well, until the morning of the Canterbury race-meeting. There she must have witnessed, in company with myself, Mrs. Grey's stinging rebuke of her cicisbeo. The outrage! The betrayal! The mortification! And then, in the privacy of her own room, the desolation of loss. It should be enough to pique the sensibility of any well-bred young woman.

That Mr. Sothey had discerned his Anne in the Austen carriage, I little doubted — his marked interest in the Godmersham nursery, so evident during our conversation at Eastwell, was now explained. The mysterious letter that Fanny perceived on Wednesday would have been his communication; and no answer to it arriving— no Anne Sharpe appearing at the Eastwell dinner on Friday — he would necessarily have been at a high pitch of nerves. Whatever Sothey wrote to the governess, it had precipitated a different reply than he had expected, for she had ordered a fire as early as Thursday and destroyed the entirety of his correspondence.

But would a young lady, bred to the most delicate sense of duty, have consented to correspond with such a man, absent some private understanding of marriage? Had Anne Sharpe, in fact, been secretly engaged to Mr. Sothey?

Then his attentions to Francoise Grey — and the subsequent public rupture at the Canterbury race-meeting— were despicable, indeed. What if Anne Sharpe had somehow precipitated Mrs. Grey's anger? And incited Julian Sothey to murder?