“If I might venture an opinion, Uncle—”

“By all means, Jane.”

“I must believe that a soul oppressed by misery and grief should far sooner find consolation in the strains of the violincello, or the airs of an Italian love song, than in betting and trumps. I shall be happy to accompany you, sir, should you wish to pursue the concert scheme; and stand ready to brave your most inveterate wit, upon our return.”

“Capital! Capital! And perhaps we shall persuade your brother Henry and his little wife to make another couple!” He beamed all around, and reached for his fine black hat. “I shall invite them myself — for I am bent upon the Pump Room this very moment, Jane, in pursuit of my glass of water, you know — and am sure to meet them there! There is nothing like Mrs. Henry for the Pump Room of a morning!”

But his energy was not required; the door was hurriedly opened, and the housemaid announced the Henry Austens, in a breathless accent that suggested they were hard upon her heels. And indeed, it required only an instant for Eliza to enter, beaming, in a ravishing blue silk gown and fur tippet, with Henry hurrying behind.

“My dear Mrs. Perrot!” she exclaimed, “and Uncle James! How delighted I am to see you all! But surely you are not on the point of leaving, Uncle — for we have had the saddest struggle in the world in adventuring the streets, and it would be too bad of you to run away now that we are come.”

“It is the Christmas holiday,” my aunt opined sagely. “Bath is ever a hurly-burly at such a time; and in a week it will be worse — what with mummers, and Waits, and singing bands, and children begging coins for the slightest service.[73] Good-for-nothings, all of them, intent on profiting by a sacred observance!”

“It was not the crowd, Aunt, but the chairmen! Only fancy! Our chairs were very nearly overturned! I was reminded of poor Mr. Lawrence, Jane, and thought of you extremely.”

“Mr. Lawrence?” I said with a frown.

“Why, yes! Did you not hear of his misfortune? It was all about the Pump Room yesterday — though I had the news myself of Isabella Wolff, while attending service at the Laura Chapel.”

“What news?”

“Mr. Lawrence was waylaid Saturday evening, upon his return to the Bear from the Theatre Royal, and not a stone’s throw from our own lodgings. A band of ruffians set upon him, and very nearly exacted his life! The poor man was most shockingly beat about the head, and was several hours insensible, until the ministrations of Dr. Gibbs succeeded in reviving him.”

“I am astonished!” I cried, my colour rising. I was devoutly happy, at that moment, that my father had elected to remain at home in Green Park Buildings, for his sensibility should have betrayed the truth of my own misadventure. “And did not the chairmen come to his aid?”

“They were all run off; and I believe the Mayor of Bath is to make a representation to the principals among them, protesting Mr. Lawrence’s shocking treatment, for he is a figure of some note, and his misfortune cannot show the town to advantage.”

“Assuredly not. Mr. Lawrence is recovered, I hope?”

“He is; but keeps to his rooms, and sees no one but my dear Isabella. She was much distressed, and attempted the Laura Chapel a-purpose to beseech Divine Providence for intercession.”

“I wonder she did not find in his misfortune a visitation of Divine Judgement,” Cassandra mused, “upon her reprehensible behaviour in encouraging the gentleman’s attentions. She might more profitably have sought to mend her erring ways, and returned to London and her husband.”

“Oh, pshaw!” Eliza cried. “You are become a sad stick, indeed, Cassandra, since your unfortunate overturning in Lyme!”

My brother Henry had been speaking in a low voice all the while to my mother; and at this, he made his way to my side, and folded me to his bosom. “My dearest Jane,” he said, with a speaking glance, “I am made most unhappy by this dreadful news from Ashe.”

“What is it, Henry?” his wife broke in. “Of what are you speaking?”

“Did you but observe my sisters, Eliza, even so headlong a wit as yours must endeavour to form a notion.”

She gazed, her happiness fled; comprehended the sombre nature of our gowns, and the dusky colour of our ribbons and gloves; and entreated us for explanation.

“Our own dear Madam Lefroy,” I said with difficulty. “She was injured in a fall from a horse on Saturday, and died but a few hours later.”

“Oh, Jane! How desperate for yourself — and indeed, for all our dear family,” Eliza cried, and sat down abruptly upon a footstool. “I had not an idea of it! But how melancholy for the unfortunate Lefroys! The youngest cannot be sixteen!”

“Thirteen,” Cassandra supplied, and turned to my mother, who had commenced a quiet weeping.

“When I consider, that we spoke our last to her only a week ago, in Laura Place — with never a notion that we should see her no more!” Eliza pressed her little hands to her head. “La, this is a miserable business. And you should feel it most acutely, Jane, who were as another daughter to her. She will be very much missed.”

“And so she is already.”

“Even I, who knew her only slightly, can remember her with nothing but affection. Do you know,” Eliza said with a small laugh through her tears, “that I credit Madam Lefroy with encouraging dear Henry to press his suit? Yes! It was she! For you know your mother should never have looked kindly on him marrying his cousin, and one full ten years his senior, at that. But Madam Lefroy had known us together in our youth — when we played at The Wonder, or A Woman Keeps a Secret, at Steventon one Christmas. Your brother James wrote an epilogue for it. Do you remember, Jane?”

“Vaguely — but I was very young.”

“Not above eight or so, I should think. I was only just returned from France. Yes. It was the year ‘87, little Hastings was yet a babe in arms, and my husband established on his estates with his mistress — and I felt, as I gazed upon poor Henry, that I had never seen a boy so callow and yet so filled with every noble emotion. It was ten years, of course, and the Comte de Feuillide a victim of the guillotine, before I felt myself free to marry again; but I learned to my joy that it was Madam Lefroy brought dear Henry to the point.”

“Madam believed in marriages of attachment a great deal more than marriages of prudence.”—Though prudence had taken the upper hand in the case of her nephew.

“It is strange, is it not,” Eliza mused, “that she should lose her life so hard upon the heels of the Duchess’s rout? We must declare the evening ill-fortune’d in every particular, for it has certainly occasioned a tide of melancholy and loss.”

“Madam’s death can have little to do with the masquerade, my dear,” I replied, with far more assurance than in fact I felt. “But I will admit the coincidence of events may bear so unhappy a construction.”

“And now Mr. Lawrence is set upon at the doors of his inn,” she reflected. “I cannot like the present aspect of Bath; it is but too reminiscent of my last days in Paris! I shall not trust myself to the streets, and must exert my energies to a swift removal.”

I smiled and sat down beside her. “Eliza, Eliza — I cannot think an overturned chair, or a lady’s fall from a horse in Hampshire, can recall anything of the revolt in France. Endeavour to compose yourself, my dear, and attend to my Uncle Perrot. He has a scheme devised solely for your pleasure.”

She turned immediately to that affable gentleman; heard his proposal for the concert; and had only to learn that I intended to make another of the party, to accept in the most delightful accent possible — and so Eliza’s mourning passed, as all her extremes of spirit must — with the force and transience of a summer shower.