“Are you displeased with the party? Is the Bond Street Beau not to your liking?”

She flushed. “Mr. Thrace is a most gentleman-like man in every respect. I own I am pleasantly surprised. If only the rest of the company were so well chosen!”

“Should you not lie down? I might enquire of Miss Beckford whether there is vinegar-water, for bathing your temples—”

She shook her head fiercely, which I should have thought would increase her pain; but if so, she was determined not to regard it. “Miss Austen — you have lived in the world more than I, and know far more of. gentlemen, and such things. ”

“A little, perhaps,” I returned guardedly; but my heart sank. Was I about to receive an unlooked-for confidence, and be burdened hereafter with an intimacy I had not sought?

“If only I knew what I ought to do, ” Catherine whispered, her fingers on her temples and her eyes closing in pain. “If only I understood my duty. ”

“Duty is the clearest path we know,” I told her. “It is the path of the heart that descends into obscurity.”

These words seemed to arrest her thoughts. The fluttering hands fell to her sides, and her mouth opened in a soundless O. At that instant, the drawing-room door opened and the gentlemen returned — faces flushed, heads thrown back in laughter at some jest of my brother’s — all except one. Mr. Hinton alone was morose and solitary. His sneering gaze fell upon Catherine where she stood at my side, and I observed her to stiffen, her lips compressed. Then, with an attitude of resolution, she approached her father and spoke low in his ear.

“All in good time, my dear,” he said heartily. “All in good time. The night is young, you know — and the card tables about to be brought out!”

She looked despairing; but her mother and sister were insensible to her pleas of ill health, and determined to remain as long as possible in such interesting company; and so Catherine retired to the far end of the room, intending to form no part of the groupings around the tables.

In a few moments I observed Julian Thrace to join her there. He seemed to enquire after her health, and unlike Mr. Hinton, I thought he should not be repulsed.

“Jane,” my mother said indignantly as she approached the fireplace, “wait until you hear what that woman has been saying to me. I will not call her a lady; I will not condescend to offer her that distinction.”

“Which woman, Mamma?”

“The Hinton creature. In her lisping, oily way she has desired me to understand that his lordship’s treasure chest is everywhere known to be residing in our cottage, and that speculation is rife as to the morals of my younger daughter. That intimathy on both thideth undoubtedly exithted, Miss Hinton would have me know, without the benefit of the marriage vow, is firmly established; and the horror of the ladies in the surrounding country, at being forced to acknowledge a hardened bit of muslin such as yourself — if only to remain on good terms with the Squire, whom she also suggested is of the lowest depravity imaginable, as evidenced by his heartless actions towards his tenants — is an insult from which the best local families are unlikely to recover. As though you were a Cyprian of the most dashing kind! It is too bad, Jane, when all he left you was a quantity of paper! I could cry with vexation!”

“Miss Hinton said all this?” I demanded with amusement. “I am astonished at her powers of articulation.”

“I do not mean to say she spoke it out plain,” my mother retorted impatiently, “but I am not so green that I cannot divine the meaning of a pack of lies. It is insupportable, Jane, that the Rogue should see fit to sink your character from his very grave!

And you not a penny the richer!”

“Lord Harold’s notice remains one of the chief delights of my existence, Mamma,” I answered quietly, “and I shall never learn to despise it. If I care nothing for the malice of a Jane Hinton, why should you listen to her words? It is all envy, ignorance, and pride; and we need consider none of them.”

My mother being very soon thereafter claimed for a table of whist, I was relieved of the necessity of calming her further, but longed to share Miss Hinton’s absurdity with Henry — who should value it as he ought. That the spite of the lady sprang in part from the ill-will of the brother, I had little doubt; and wondered whether Jack Hinton was determined to part Catherine Prowting from my dangerous company. The girl’s indecision might account for the troubled looks, and pleas of a head-ache. One fact alone in my mother’s recital gave rise to apprehension: that so many of the inhabitants of Chawton and Alton purported to know of my affairs, and were conversing freely about Lord Harold’s chest. I had not yet accustomed myself to the littlenesses of a country village; and tho’ I had perused some part of the chest’s contents, I was not yet mistress of the whole. I resolved to spend the better part of the morning in achieving a thorough understanding of Lord Harold’s early life.

The resolution was strengthened by a chance comment from a surprising quarter: Lady Imogen Vansittart, who passed so near to me in her progress towards the gaming tables that she must speak, or appear insufferable.

“I find, Miss Austen, that we have an acquaintance in common,” she said with her bewitching smile. “The Countess of Swithin is my intimate friend. I believe you were acquainted with her uncle, the late lamented Lord Harold Trowbridge?”

“I have had that honour — yes,” I replied.

“Poor Desdemona is very low. She practically lived in Lord Harold’s pocket, from what I understand. And who can blame her, with such a father? Bertie is the meanest stick in the world — I should not be saddled with him for a parent for all the Wilborough fortune! Marriage was the wisest choice Mona ever made. It freed her from one form of imprisonment — tho’ we must hope it did not throw her into another.”

I was at a loss for a proper response to this observation, and so managed only to say, “I cannot wonder that the Countess should mourn her uncle. They were very good friends as well as relations.”

“I understand Mona nearly rode out from London in search of you herself,” Lady Imogen observed. “She was quite wild with fury that his lordship had left you all his papers. Care- less, she called it.”

A thrill of apprehension coursed through my body, setting it to tingling as tho’ Lord Harold’s hand had caressed my skin.

“Papers? What papers?”

“Those in the Bengal chest, of course. The diaries and correspondence his lordship guarded with such vigour in life.”

Lady Imogen tossed me an arch look. “Do not play the village idiot with me, Miss Austen. The Great World has long been agog to know what was recorded of its vicious propensities in Lord Harold’s inscrutable hand. My own father — who has been intimate with his lordship these thirty years — would part with half my inheritance to know in what manner he himself figures in those pages, and which secrets have been let slip like the veriest cat out of the bag.”

“Lady Imogen,” said a gentle voice at my shoulder, “I believe you are wanted at the faro table. Mr. Thrace is attending you.”

“Good God, Charles, do you wish to see me ruined?” Lady Imogen reached her hand to Major Spence’s cheek, where he stood correctly awaiting her with no quarter offered his weak leg. “You know my luck is damnably out. There will be a line of duns a mile long awaiting us at Stonings, and you do not prevent me from wagering everything I have!”

Major Spence’s sombre gaze shifted a fraction to meet my own, and I thought I read in its depths a kind of apology, and a plea for discretion. But then the steward’s grey eyes returned to the bright image before him, and he lifted her hand from his cheek. “Julian will not be happy unless you play. Therefore I charge you only to play well, my lady.”