Her green eyes narrowed. “Has the Gentleman Improver routed you so entirely? He has a cunning air. Were I disposed to throw my daughter away, I could not do better than Lady Elizabeth. She shall see Miss Louisa eloped to Gretna with her protege before the summer is out, if she does not take care.”

I seized Lizzy's elbow and steered her to the door.

“Pray excuse us, my dear,” she called over her shoulder to Neddie, “Jane and I cannot hope to rival the Finch-Hattons in beauty, but must fly this moment if we are not entirely to disgrace you.”

Neddie bowed as we quitted the room, the very picture of a dutiful husband; but his eyes were a-brim with laughter and the frankest admiration as he gazed after his wife. It was clear from his looks that all Miss Louisa's petulant blonde charms could never sway his devotion to the dark and enchanting. Mr. Sothey's quotation rose unbidden into my mind. “There is something in a face / An air, and a peculiar grace… “Kent is indeed the only place for happiness, and everyone is rich there — but in far more than mere pounds and pence.

I CONVEYED MY APPREHENSION REGARDING MR. SOTHEY to Lizzy as we dressed hurriedly for dinner. Sayce was busy about my sister's hair for some time, and our conversation was necessarily curtailed while the lady's maid was present in the room; it would never do for even so superior a servant as Sayce to carry tales of murder to the servants' hall. But as soon as Lizzy was suitably adorned for an intimate dinner among friends — in a cream lawn gown, sprigged and trimmed in exactly the colour of her eyes; its negligent cut and dampened underskirt displayed her form to breathless effect — I concluded my tale of the silent figure poised at the mounts of Mrs. Grey's phaeton, and the cruel descent of the whip.

“Of course,” Lizzy murmured, “I recollect the whole. Mrs. Grey's dreadful end had the power to put flight to every other scene we witnessed that day; and I confess that Sothey's features were hardly clear to me at such a remove. They must have stood an hundred paces from our carriage; and my eyes were never strong. I retained only the memory of a rather spare, gentlemanlike figure, that offered not the slightest protest to her abuse. But tell me, Jane,” she went on, turning slightly away from the mirror to face me, “—you cannot believe Sothey capable of Mrs. Grey's murder? And on so slight a provocation as a public insult?”

“I do not know what to believe,” I said despairingly. “We can know so very little. Certainly there was a discord between them; and we know that Sothey determined to quit The Larches that very day. No one has thought to enquire where the gentleman should have been, while Denys Collingforth's chaise was upon the Wingham road. How simple for him to borrow it, and ride in pursuit of the woman who shamed him!”

“You believe Mr. Sothey to have been Mrs. Grey's lover, as well as Mr. Collingforth—and the French Comte?” Lizzy adjusted the petals of a flower that Sayce had secured in her hair, and surveyed herself acutely in the glass. “The lady certainly made effective use of her time.”

“We know that Mr. Sothey was resident at The Larches for nearly six months, and that, when Mr. Grey was much in Town,” I observed. “In such unusual circumstances, an illicit passion would not be unthinkable. Even Mrs. Grey, moreover, would not dare to strike a mere acquaintance in so public a manner. So they must have been intimate. There was a passion to the entire scene, quite subtle but undeniable, that might have borne the parties to any length of indiscretion.”

“Even murder? But pray consider, Jane — did not the passion we witnessed emanate from the lady herself, rather than the man you would suggest did away with her? And was it the fury of love denied, or of love unrequited? Was there not more of wounding, than rejection, in the blow?”

I considered her words a moment in silence, then studied my sister with a new respect. “I should have to say that the passion was entirely Mrs. Grey's, Lizzy. What impressed me forcibly at the time, was the forbearance in the gentleman's entire manner — the sanguine aspect of his countenance as the crop came down upon his neck. He was like a schoolboy called to reprimand before his headmaster, accepting of what he knew to be both just and inevitable. There was neither fear, nor anguish, nor pleading in his looks — only the calm of resignation.”

“I am entirely of your way of thinking, Jane. Let us declare, then, that Sothey had broken with the lady, and incurred her wrath; and thus, should hardly have need of strangling her in her shift but an hour later.”

“Your idea of it is quite persuasive,” I acknowledged, “but how can one possibly determine what to think? We know so little of the particulars, and even less of the characters involved; how one might be worked upon, and another influenced for good or evil.”

Lizzy snatched up her reticule and turned to the door. “However little you may comprehend at the moment, my dear Jane, I am certain you shall know it all in a matter of hours. For what better field than a dinner party for the marshalling of your troops — wit, flirtation, and a penetrating mind?”

MY SISTER'S CONFIDENCE IN MY POWERS WAS SADLY misplaced. We descended to the great drawing-room, which was furnished discordantly in several of the latest fashions: couches of loose silk cushions in the Turkish manner, and chairs whose carved gilt arms resembled swans; the whole ceiling tented with a striped silk fabric drawn up in the center of the room, and suspended from the claws of a bronze gryphon, as tho' Napoleon's hordes had overrun several continents with a view to nothing nobler than a miscellany sale — we found the entire party assembled for a removal to the dining-parlour, and ourselves the tardy culprits. That Lizzy gloried in the tedium she had imposed upon Lady Elizabeth— the smallish conversation, and the covert glances at the mantel-clock — I readily perceived. My sister's countenance was as serene as a summer day, however, as she followed Sir Janison and Lady Gordon to the dining-parlour. The rest of us came after in something of a hurly-burly, there being little of precedence to choose among us; a polite skirmish ensued between Mr. Brett and Mr. Sothey, with the former determined he should carry Miss Louisa down the hall, and the latter far more indifferent to the outcome than the lady might have wished. Henry having engaged to convey Miss Mary Finch, I found myself taken up by none other than Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton, the distinguished (and unusually voluble) younger brother — a circumstance I was inclined to lament, being intent upon the elucidation of Mr. Sothey. But I bore with the reversal with something like grace — a something that increased to surprise and gratitude, when I learned more of my dinner companion.

To say that Mr. Emilious Finch-Hatton is the younger brother of the house, is to suggest a degree of callowness that is entirely unwarranted. He cannot be less than forty, nor older than sixty; but where the truth of his years might be reckoned, I cannot begin to guess.[42] A grey-haired man of elegant manner, he is quick-witted, lithe of movement, open of countenance, and ready in his laughter. Having known him these many years to be an acknowledged bon vivant, as liberal in his habits of expense as his easy manner suggests, I had not suspected him of a more sober interest; but must now acknowledge deception as Mr. Emilious's most subtle talent.

Having established me correctly at the lower end of the table, he settled himself to my right. “I have long looked forward to this summer's meeting, Miss Austen, from the desire to speak with you regarding a mutual acquaintance,” he began, as the napkins were unfurled, and the wine poured.