“None at all, I assure you.”

“And your home. it was not unduly disturbed? There were no losses of a personal nature?”

His concern was so earnest, his expression so truly amiable, that I could not be unmoved. “You are very good, sir — but the losses were not ours to tally. That has been poor Mrs. French’s office.”

“You will wish to take greater care in future, I am sure, Miss Austen, to secure your valuables against a similar invasion. The coroner, I understand, could arrive at no solution to the mystery of the labourer’s death? — Or at least, how he came to be in your cellar?”

“You must question Mr. Prowting on that score. He is our magistrate, and must be in command of more particulars than I.” With more courage than tact I added, “The poor man was often at Stonings, I understand, in recent weeks. Did you never notice him there?”

An instant’s confusion clouded the Major’s countenance, but any reply he might have made was forestalled by the approach of Miss Maria Beckford.

“Miss Austen,” she said in her brisk, decisive way, as tho’ commanding a parade ground, “allow me to introduce Miss Jane Hinton to your acquaintance.”

Major Spence stepped aside, and bowed; I curtseyed to the woman at Miss Beckford’s right hand, and regarded with amusement this new trial.

Jane Hinton was some years older than her brother — a woman nearly forty whose bloom had long since gone off. She appeared correct and unremarkable in a prim white cap and a pair of spectacles, behind which her flat brown eyes were intently appraising. Her dress was of a most unbecoming yellow hue, her skin coarse; and when she spoke, it was with a pronounced lisp that made her speech singularly unpleasing.

“I have heard your name everywhere, Mith Authten,” she said without warmth. “You are quite the talk of the village — indeed, of every habitation for mileth around. We are not accuthtomed, in our retired country way, to ladieth condethending to vithit a coroner’th inquetht; but I thuppothe, when the lady in quethtion hath actually thtumbled over the body, that we mutht be prepared for anything.”

“My brother did say that he met with you in Alton yesterday,” Miss Beckford observed, “and I thought it most courageous of you to attend, my dear. The notice of a member of the Squire’s family must be a great comfort in a death of this kind, and shall be felt as it ought, among the lower orders. May I present Mr. John-Knight Hinton, also of Chawton Lodge?”

My slight poet of the cut indirect was arrayed this evening in primrose knee breeches, a white satin waistcoat, and a black evening coat with stiffly-padded shoulders. His snowy cravat was of so intricate a construction that it bewildered the eye, and a quizzing glass dangled from a fine gold chain about his neck. Mr. Hinton clearly prided himself on his ability to ape the most current London fashion, and his magnificence might have turned the head of many a green girl; but to my more practised gaze, Julian Thrace’s neat elegance — or even Major Spence’s quiet rectitude — more clearly proclaimed the gentleman. He raised his quizzing glass, surveyed me impudently, and scraped a bow.

“I have already had a glimpse of Mr. Hinton,” I told Miss Beckford with a smile, “at yesterday’s inquest, and again today in Alton. What was your opinion of the tragic business, sir?”

“I thought it very singular that such grievous trouble should arise in so peaceful and respectable a place,” Mr. Hinton returned. “Indeed, I may say that I was ashamed the shades of Chawton must be so polluted.”

“And yet you could not keep away from the coroner’s panel,” Miss Beckford observed astringently. “I suppose it is of a piece with your usual sporting amusements. Mr. Hinton is quite a slave to the Corinthian Set, Miss Austen. There is not a prizefight or a cock pit within thirty miles that is unknown to him.”[15]

“Indeed?” I murmured with an air of surprise. “From your appearance, Mr. Hinton — so much the Sprig of Fashion! — I should have thought you aspired to the Dandy Set.”

The gentleman dropped his quizzing glass as tho’ struck to the quick.

“I observe Mr. Papillon is arrived,” Miss Beckford supplied quickly. “If you will excuse me—”

She moved off, with a nod for Mr. Hinton that flavoured strongly of contempt; but the gentleman did not seize the opportunity to follow her, as I might have expected. Miss Beckford was as a fly he swept aside with a careless hand.

“Violence is quite foreign to those who truly love this country, Miss Austen; and certain it is that a corpse should never have been discovered in Widow Seward’s cottage,” Mr. Hinton observed. “But she was most truly the lady in all respects. I need hardly add that the presence of Dyer’s labourers would not have been necessary prior to her forcible eviction. She saw no reason to complain of the cottage’s arrangements.”

His implication was clear: we Austens had brought this trouble upon the village ourselves, and we Austens alone must bear the burden of its disgrace. I flushed in the sudden heat of anger — which discomposure was undoubtedly Mr. Hinton’s object — but any words I might have uttered were overborne. The bell was rung, the ladies’ hands disposed among the gentlemen — and we were all sent in to dinner.

Letter from Lord Harold Trowbridge to Charles, Earl Grey, dated 2 June 1791, one leaf quarto, laid; no watermark; signed Trowbridge under a black wax seal bearing imprint of Wilborough arms; marked, Personelle, Par Chassure Exprès, in red ink.

(British Museum, Wilborough Papers, Austen bequest)

Rue de Varennes, Paris

My dear Charles—

I thank you for your last, and am most happy to know that you perceive a change in the political fortunes of our party in coming months. If the Duke of Devonshire will lend his weight where weight is necessary, anything may happen; and your good angel, my beloved Georgiana, may yet effect the necessary push. Canis will not act, as we know to our misfortune, and the Duchess does not will it; but her affection for yourself and her high courage shall see us all through.

I dined with Jouvel in the country near Versailles last evening, and he begs to be remembered to you. He has a very pretty daughter of but fifteen, and were I in the habit of carrying off girls half my age, I should be sorely tempted; but as it is, I must direct my energies elsewhere. I am charged with no less, and the stakes — as we used to say at Brooks’s — are murderously high.

You will be pleased to know that the difficulties attendant upon Revolutionary fervour that you and I foresaw, in Cornwall this spring, are already anticipated among our friends on this side of the Channel. I stand ready to ship any number of “wine casks”

and “horses of racing blood” in the small vessels you have promised to have ready off Marseille, and have found a likely lad to help me in the transport. His name is Geoffrey Sidmouth, and he is tied by blood to any number of people we esteem and value; he is a handy fellow with the management of ships, and is in good heart. I will send word when the need arises; I hope it may not for some time, but I fear that my hope is false. I remain, my dear Charles—

Trowbridge