“I should not part with him for a kingdom.”

“You drive a hard bargain. I like that in a fellow.” Barnewall glanced roguishly down the table to his wife, who regarded Mr. Sidmouth with an indulgent smile, as though he were a very small boy. “Perhaps I shall have Evie work upon you, eh? The woman can charm a cock out of a henhouse.”

“I fear even such a talent would prove of little use in the present case, Barnewall,” Captain Fielding interposed drily. “Sidmouth holds tenaciously to his dearest possessions. There is no wrath more powerful a man may excite, than to wrest from him that which he prizes.” The two men exchanged a long look, and that the Captain spoke of far more than Sidmouth's horse, I felt convinced.

But it was Mr. Sidmouth who dropt his eyes first, seeming absorbed in the fork he turned in his hand. “Though Mrs. Barnewall may claim a stupendous advantage over poultry, and I am given to crowing on occasion, I beg to consider myself as anything but fowl,” he said with a slight smile. “The horse is not for sale.” With that, he turned away from the Honourable Mathew, as though the conversation were at an end, and bent his dark glance upon my countenance; but Barnewall was not so easily put aside.

“Come, come, Sidmouth! Having bested the dragoons at their own game, you cannot wish to engage them further! One would think you intended a swift escape from the country, and would keep the stallion at the ready!”

“And what do you intend for Satan?” Mr. Sidmouth enquired levelly — halting the table at the very mention of the horse's evil name.

Mr. Barnewall hesitated, and looked about the dining-room, some of the wind drooping from his sails. “By Jove,” he muttered, “I hadn't thought to buy a horse with such an ill-made handle. Might bring all the wrath of God upon the house.”

“He intends to race him,” Mrs. Barnewall said briskly in the continued quiet. “You know, Sidmouth, that Mathew is a formidable owner of a string of nags. He is quite the prop of the Jockey Club at home — to the detriment of our funds. He has excessive plans for Kingsland, does he ever come into his inheritance — and does he fail to squander it before he may truly lay his claim.”

“I gather from your lady's words, Barnewall, that she fears your liberality, and should rather I kept my horse in Lyme, than sold him to you; and so much for her celebrated charm. We may consider the matter as settled.”

“Now, now,” Mathew Barnewall exclaimed, his scowl for his wife giving way to a fatuous smile, “don't force me to rob your stables!”

“If you did, my dear sir, it should avail you nothing,” Mr. Crawford broke in, “for Sidmouth so prizes his horseflesh, he has undertaken to mark them in a singular manner. You should not get far without discovery.”

“Do you brand them, then?” Mrs. Barnewall enquired, her nose wrinkling with repugnance.

“Never,” Sidmouth replied.

“He has his initials cut into their shoes!” Mr. Crawford declared, with a delighted slap upon his mahogany table. “No thief could fail to leave a telling trail behind him.”

“Shoes?” my mother enquired, only now, it seemed, emerging from the fog of suspense into which Miss Crawford's words regarding my sister's fate had thrown her. “But cannot one merely exchange one shoe for another?”

I knew her immediately to have mistaken the master's shoe for his horse's, and to have stumbled upon a point all unawares; for Mr. Crawford seized at her apparent perspicacity with the greatest delight. Assuredly, madam, and a clever ruse it would be — but even did the thief know beforehand of the shoes’ mark, he could do nothing without a blacksmith; and horse and thief should undoubtedly be apprehended while still bent upon the forge. I consider it a capital idea.”

This response so confounded my mother's understanding, as to silence her for the moment; and the conversation turned to other things.

MY MASTERY OF CURIOSITY WAS REWARDED AS SUCH MASTERY ONLY rarely is — with Mr. Sidmouth's broaching the subject of his cousin in a very little while. The ladies had retired to the drawing-room, and at the gentlemen's following soon thereafter, bearing the scents of tobacco and excellent port about their persons, Mr. Sidmouth joined me before Captain Fielding should have the chance. Miss Armstrong had seated herself at the pianoforte, and Mademoiselle LeFevre stood at her side, her voice swelling with Italian airs; so captivatingly beautiful, and so clearly freed of all the evening's anxiety, as to make the heart sing with her.

“Your cousin is very lovely, Mr. Sidmouth,” I ventured, with a glance at his brooding face.

He was engaged in studying Seraphine intently, and seemed almost not to have heard me. After an instant, his dark eyes turned back to mine, and he said abruptly, “I would ask of you a favour, Miss Austen. My cousin is too much alone. You will have guessed that she labours under the effect of some sad business; discretion, and a care for her delicacy, forbid me from saying more. I would ask only that you consider her gende nature, her evident goodness — the fragility of her understanding—” At this he halted, for the first time in our acquaintance, completely tongue-tied.

“I do not pretend to comprehend your cousin's place in your household,” I began slowly, “nor her entire relationship to yourself. But if I take your meaning correctly, you wish me to visit Mademoiselle LeFevre — to undertake a certain … intimacy.”

Sidmouth had flushed at my initial words, and appeared in an agony of indecision as to his response; but now he bowed his head and touched a hand to his brow. “I cannot convince you of what you have no reason to believe,” he said quietly. “Rumour and calumny are accepted of themselves, and a simpler goodness hardly to be credited. I know to whom I owe your hesitancy. But for Seraphine's sake I will say nothing of this here; I will merely trust in your goodness. You cannot turn away from a soul in suffering — your every aspect declares you to be a woman of sympathy and such warmth as is rarely met with.”

Seraphine's liquid voice rose in the final tremulous notes of an aria — the cry, no doubt, of a woman betrayed and dying, as with all such songs — and fell away into silence. There was a moment's indrawn breath, a hesitation, and then a sudden patter of applauding hands.

“I shall call upon your cousin as soon as ever I may, Mr. Sidmouth,” I said; and received a fervent look of gratitude in return.

I HAD OCCASION TO CONSIDER ALL THAT PASSED SATURDAY E'EN, while sitting this morning with my mother in the little breakfast parlour of Wings cottage — which I must confess is decidedly shabby, when exposed to the strong sunlight of morning.

“I still cannot comprehend, my dear, why Mr. Sidmouth should take his shoes to the blacksmith,” my mother was saying to the Reverend Austen, whose head would droop over his volume of Fordyce's Sermons—when Jenny, our housemaid, threw open the door. Her fresh young face bore a look of alarm, and she twisted her apron in anxious hands.

“Miss Crawford, madam, and Miss Armstrong,” she said, bobbing swiftly as the black-clad form of Augusta Crawford swept by her.

My mother stood up abruptly, her serviette dropping to the floor, while my father snorted to wakefulness and struggled to his feet A chorus of salutation all around, which afforded me just enough time to notice the marks of weeping upon Lucy Armstrong's face; and then the ladies seated themselves without further ado.

“We do not come to you this morning merely for the pleasure of a social call,” Miss Crawford began briskly, her hands gripping the reticule she propped upon her black-gowned knees; “no, I fear we are come with the saddest of tidings and the blackest of news.”