Mrs. Prowting emitted a faint scream, one plump hand over her mouth, the other clutching her handkerchief.

“It is said,” Thrace further observed, “that, hounded across land and sea unceasingly by Indian pursuers of a most deadly and subtle kind, the Lieutenant landed in Southampton and made his way by feverish degrees towards London. Coming to St. Nicholas’s Church” — this, with a bow for Mr. Papillon, Chawton’s clergyman, who was seated at the bottom of the table — “he sought refuge in the sanctuary, where the Hindu fakirs, being unmoved by Christian belief, wounded him severely. In Chawton the trail of the purloined rubies comes to an abrupt end.”

“Are you thuggethting, thir, that thith thimple village ith in the unwitting pothethion of the Thpoilth of War?” enquired Miss Hinton. It was the first remark I had heard her to address to the upper end of the table; and I applauded its natural sense. She was not to be taken in by a spurious fribble, a Pink of the Ton; hers was a sober countenance, suggestive of a lady much given to reading sermons, and making Utheful Extracth. Mr. Thrace, his eyes on Catherine Prowting’s glowing countenance, slowly crumbled a piece of bread between his fingers.

“The necklace was believed to be cursed — not simply from the manner of its possession, but from a flaw inherent in the stones themselves. Rubies, so like to blood, must draw blood to them; and so it proved in this case. The Rubies of Chandernagar destroyed each of their successive masters.”

“For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and loothe hith Immortal Thoul?” observed Miss Hinton with complacency.

“I had not heard this story of my father,” Lady Imogen imposed, “tho’ I know him to have moved in a very rakehell set while in India. Chandernagar, however, was some thirty years before his time on the Subcontinent.”

“I believe the story has achieved a permanent place in the Indian firmament,” Thrace said, “due to its bloodthirstiness. No doubt your respected father learned it of an eyewitness.”

“But surely the marauding Lieutenant was a man of parts?”

Lady Imogen objected. “What are a whole company of Hindu against one hardened English soldier? Major Spence, for example, should never be parted from his treasure so easily!”

Her liquid eyes were dark with excitement, her voice throbbing and low. I observed that while her gaze was fixed on Julian Thrace, Major Spence was observing her; as he did so, an expression of pain crossed his countenance.

“The Lieutenant who seized them, to the ruin of their French owner, had his throat cut while he lay in that very inn which you, ma’am”—this, with a gracious acknowledgement of my mother—“have now the happy fortune to inhabit,” Thrace continued. “The wounded man dragged himself to the publick house, wounded and bleeding, seeking refuge from his pursuers. His body was discovered on the morning following — but of the rubies no trace was ever found.”

“Perhaps this is the root of the cottage’s ill-fortune,” Mr. Hinton observed languidly. “If your story is true, Thrace, the digger of the cesspit was not the first corpse to lie there. I daresay it was the necklace that good-for-nothing ruffian French was searching for, in the depths of Mrs. Austen’s cellar.”

“But it will not do, man!” Mr. Prowting exclaimed, and threw down his napkin. “Shafto French was drowned, as the coroner has said. He cannot both have been treasure-hunting in the cottage cellar, and breathing his last in Chawton Pond!”

A slightly shocked silence followed this outburst; one which the clergyman Mr. Papillon had the grace to end.

“But in the case of the Earl’s Indian story,” he observed with a correct smile, as though improving an archbishop’s views on Ordination, “nothing is clearer. Naturally the rubies were not to be discovered. The thieving Lieutenant gave up his booty with his life, and his murderer lived ever after on the proceeds.”

“One should suppose no such thing,” Mr. Thrace retorted, “it being attested by those who study these matters, that the stones never afterwards came onto the market. What sort of thief makes away with a considerable prize, and does not attempt to profit by it? No, no, my dear sir — the Rubies of Chandernagar are in one of two places: either hidden beneath the stones of your own St. Nicholas’s crypt, where the errant Lieutenant — already fearing for his life — placed them before receiving his deadly wound; or concealed still about the grounds of the late inn.”

My mother’s looks were eloquent: a mixture of rapacity and uneasiness.

“And does our home accommodate the murdered soldier as well?” I demanded lightly, “—his ghost creaking of nights upon the stairs of the cottage, crying out for vengeance?”

“You may inform us whether it is so in the morning, Miss Austen.”

Amidst general laughter, Lady Imogen protested, “For my part, I think it imperative that a search party be formed after dinner, as a kind of amusement, so that we might fan out across the countryside with lanthorns and dogs and discover the treasure. We might call the entertainment ‘Hunt the Necklace,’ and begin in St. Nicholas’s vestry!”

“Under the very flags of the church,” murmured Mr. Papillon distractedly, “or perhaps in the crypt! I cannot believe it possible — for there are several of the Deceased newly-laid in that part of the building, you know, and I cannot recollect any irregularities about the interments.”

“It is all a piece of horrid nonsense!” cried Ann Prowting with an arch look for Mr. Thrace, “but I am sure I shall not sleep a wink tonight, for gazing out my window at the cottage in my nightdress, in an effort to glimpse your ghost!”

“Let us hope, Miss Prowting,” murmured Mr. Hinton acidly, “you do not encounter Shafto French — or his murderers — instead.”

When the ladies retired from the dining parlour, it was a most ill-suited party that collected around the tea table in the Great House drawing-room. Lady Imogen took herself off to the instrument standing near the tall windows giving out onto the lawn, there to turn over the leaves of music with a deeply preoccupied air; she showed no inclination to revive the sport of Hunt the Necklace. Ann Prowting threw herself into a chair and yawned prodigiously, her conversation confined to such peevish utterances as, “Cannot we get up a dance this evening? I declare I am pining for a ball!” Her mother contented herself with arranging the stiff black folds of her dress and conversing most animatedly to Maria Beckford of the merits of Benjamin Clement, RN, who was perhaps not unknown to that lady; Miss Beckford listened in any case with the attitude of a sparrow trained upon a worm. Miss Benn had seated herself on the opposite side of Mrs. Prowting and was industriously knitting; while Jane Hinton drew forth a volume of sermons from her reticule and commenced reading, lips visibly lisping over the inaudible words.

This left me a choice of companions until the appearance of the gentlemen should restore Henry to me: Miss Elizabeth Papillon, sister to the rector of St. Nicholas’s and his spinster housekeeper, with whom I thus far had exchanged only curtseys; and Catherine Prowting. Naturally, I chose to approach the latter.

She was a solitary figure positioned near the hearth, in which no blaze burned; her eyes were fixed upon the empty firedogs, and so painful an expression of unhappiness was in all her bearing that I would have turned away without speaking to her, but for the sudden swift glance she gave me, and the lifting of her right hand as tho’ in supplication.

“Are you unwell, Catherine?” I asked without preamble.

“Only this wretched head-ache,” she replied in a suffocated voice. “I suppose I must ascribe it to the heat; but indeed I cannot bear it, and as soon as my father returns, I shall beg him to escort all our party home.”