Lady Swithin pressed her friend’s hand and attempted something of her usual manner. “No beast ever had such a heart, my dear. Yours is the largest in the world, as I have cause to know.”

Lady Harriot glanced diffidently away, as though to disguise her emotion, and said in a lowered tone, “One always feels the sufferings of the bereaved, when one has lost the dearest creature in the world! It pains me to see this fresh cloud hanging over the Penfolds family. I could shake that stillroom maid until her teeth fell out, for having brought this misfortune upon Charles!” Her jaw was set so fiercely I felt I glimpsed for an instant the spirit in Lady Harriot’s blood that had moved her forebears to Whiggish revolt.

“I believe your warm heart urges a greater anxiety for the Danforths than is necessary, Hary-O.” Lord Harold’s tone was unaccustomedly gentle. “The girl was probably despatched by a spurned lover. Sir James will have the villain out in a fortnight, and all will be forgot.”

It was something to catch Lord Harold in a barefaced lie.

“Yes,” she replied with effort. “I am sure that you are right, Lord Harold — you always are, it is your special talent.”

Lady Harriot turned to me with the ghost of a smile. “I do not need to tell you, Miss Austen, that Sir James Villiers is an excellent man — far less frivolous than his appearance would suggest, and shrewder than his friends will allow. He holds his commission at my father’s request. But I cannot help thinking that the Justice moves rather slowly. What is your opinion, Lord Harold?”

“I believe Sir James moves no faster or slower than the pace of a one-horse dray, Lady Harriot; and as that is the accustomed pace of a country town, he is exactly suited to his company. His mind, however, is formed of swifter stuff; and I should be very much surprised to learn that Sir James was not before events.”

Miss Trimmer set aside her needlework and, with a severe look for Lady Harriot, said, “Remember your duties as a hostess, Hary-O. I am gone in search of Lady Elizabeth.”

“Go, then,” her charge muttered at Miss Trimmer’s departing figure, “and if such is your errand, my dear Trimmy, I cannot wish you back again. Are you perishing for a glass of iced lemon-water, Miss Austen? For if you are, pray advise me at once and have done. I cannot abide the sort of people who stand upon ceremony, as though I were a bit of porcelain, and might break when handled.”

“Who can possibly have mistaken your character so completely, Hary-O, as to think you fragile?” enquired Lord Harold.

She flashed him a look of scorn meant entirely for another. “Forget my duties as a hostess, indeed! As though I could forget them now, when they have been utterly usurped—”

He shook his head once; she bit her lip, and struggled for self-control.

“I should very much enjoy a glass of iced lemon-water,” I said, in an effort to turn the conversation, “for Lord Harold loves nothing better than an open carriage, and you must know the dust on the roads at such a season is dreadful. I shudder to think how I must appear to you all.”

“Heaven-sent, I assure you” — Lady Swithin laughed, her colour recovered — “for the gentlemen have been riding all the morning, and two women cannot endure an entire day’s tête-à-tête together without coming to blows. You must sit between us, Miss Austen, and tell me all your news since last we met. Do you still find Bath as disagreeable as ever? I have not set foot inside the town, you know, since my marriage!”

And thus in sparkling reminiscence, with many introductions of her own adventures and good jokes, did Desdemona contrive to amuse us all for a half-hour together, while the shadows lengthened on the verdant lawn. A chair was brought for my comfort, and the promised lemon-water; Lord Harold tossed his hat aside and threw his length along the grass, resting carelessly at Hary-O’s feet, and adding a word or two when the conversation required it. He bent his efforts to peeling a series of peaches, the long, curling, golden skin lengthening under the ministrations of his pocket-knife; and I watched the subtle movements of his hands, the delicate fingers roaming over the surface of the fruit, while attending to Desdemona’s chatter with half my mind. There was trouble here in Paradise, something greater even than the grief of mourning; the anxiety behind all their looks revealed it.

I was the first to perceive Charles Danforth as he made his way across the lawn; and Lord Harold, in following my gaze, rose abruptly to his feet.

“It would appear that Trimmy has found someone besides Lady E.,” he observed to Hary-O. “I thought Charles Danforth should have arrived well before myself and Miss Austen; but perhaps he had an errand along the way.”

“Charles!” Lady Harriot cried, an unsuspected warmth in her voice; and she ran forward to seize his hand, as unaffected as a girl. “I am so glad you are come! I cannot bear to think of you, alone in that house on such a fine summer’s day! You will stay to dinner? I do not think you have been at our table three times this summer — and yet Andrew is never absent!”

“And thus we manage to achieve a balance,” Mr. Danforth replied, “Andrew, by his excess, and I in my restraint. In this you may read the nature of our characters, Lady Harriot.” The judgement was offered coolly, but there was a smile about the gentleman’s lips; whatever his inward trouble, he could not regard Lady Harriot’s eager countenance and remain unaffected.

“And were you always so measured, Mr. Danforth?” enquired Lady Swithin with a tearing glance, “or was your youth as ardent, and as misspent, as your brother’s? Come and meet my very great friend, Miss Jane Austen. She is travelling through Derbyshire, to our good fortune.”

“Miss Austen,” Charles Danforth said correctly — and was then arrested when he would have bowed, and studied my countenance keenly. “But surely — I cannot be so mistaken — surely we have already met?”

“We have had a glimpse of each other,” I replied. “In Bakewell this morning, at the Snake and Hind.”

“Good Lord! You are the lady who discovered poor Tess.”

I inclined my head. That he could speak of the maid with such charity — after the imputations the Coroner had laid at his door, and all the malice of the townsfolk — spoke to his amiable temperament.

“Was the Inquest horrid, Charles?” Lady Harriot enquired. “Miss Austen is too well-bred — or too in awe of Tommy’s disapproval — to speak of it.”

“Then I am for Miss Austen,” he quietly replied. “Such unpleasant scenes cannot be too quickly forgotten.”

“And have they no notion of who may have injured the poor maid?”

“None whatsoever, Lady Swithin. It is in every way inexplicable. I had not so much as known that she was dismissed from my service, before I learned of her death.”

“Dismissed?” Lady Harriot cried.

“Indeed! Mrs. Haskell turned Tess Arnold away, on the grounds of some grievous infraction, on the very night she was killed — although she made no such confession to me. The servants all conspire to respect my privacy, you know.” He offered this last for my benefit, who could not be presumed to know anything of Penfolds Hall.

So Charles Danforth would have us believe he knew nothing of his brother’s affairs; and perhaps, indeed, he did not. My gaze drifted towards Lord Harold; but his eyes were fixed on the gentleman’s face. His own disclosed nothing of his inward thought.

“Poor Haskell seems to feel herself in some wise responsible for the maid’s death,” Danforth continued. “It is only natural, I suppose, that she should take so much upon herself; but I cannot believe it reasonable. The girl was murdered by a wandering lunatic. That is the only explanation possible — and Haskell must learn to forgive herself.”

“It is a difficult lesson for any of us to learn,” I observed.