He didn’t look destroyed. What he looked was blank, with that vague, undecided look soldiers get when they’ve just lost a leg or been told they’re being shipped home and haven’t yet taken it in.

“Baine?” Colonel Mering said, glowering at Jane. “How did a thing like this happen?”

“Read on, Verity,” Mrs. Mering said. “We must know the worst.”

“The worst,” Verity murmured and picked up the letter. “ ‘No doubt you are curious as to how this all came about so quickly.’ ”

Which was putting it mildly.

“ ‘It all began with our trip to Coventry.’ ” She stopped, unable to go on.

Mrs. Mering snatched the letter from her impatiently. “ ‘. . . our trip to Coventry,’ ” she read, “ ‘a trip I know now the spirits were guiding us to that I might find my true love.’ Lady Godiva! I hold her entirely responsible for this!” She took the letter up again. “ ‘While we were there I admired a cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn which I know now to be in execrable taste, completely lacking in simplicity of form and design, but I had never been properly trained in matters of Artistic Sensibility or educated in Literature and Poetry, and was only an ignorant, thoughtless spoilt girl.

“ ‘I asked Baine, for that is how I still think of him, though now I must learn to call him William and beloved husband! Husband! How sweet the sound of that precious word! I asked him to concur in my praise of the footed firugeal urn. He would not. Not only would he not, but he called it hideous and told me that my taste in liking it was ignorant.

“ ‘No one had ever contradicted me before. Everyone around me had always indulged me in all my opinions and agreed with everything I said, except for Cousin Verity, who had corrected me once or twice, but I put that down to her not being married and having no prospects. I tried to help her to wear her hair in a more attractive way, but was unable to do much for her, poor thing.’ ”

“What is known as burning your bridges,” I murmured.

“ ‘Perhaps now that I am wed, Mr. Henry will notice her,’ ” Mrs. Mering read. “ ‘I tried to promote her to him, but, alas, he had eyes only for me. They would make a good couple, not handsome or clever, but well-suited nonetheless.’ ”

“All her bridges.”

“ ‘I was not at all used to being contradicted, and at first I was angry, but when you swooned on the train on the way home, Mama, and I went to fetch him, he was so strong and quick-witted and helpful in assisting you, Mama, that it was as if I saw him with new eyes, and I fell in love with him right there in the railway carriage.’ ”

“It’s all my fault,” Verity murmured. “If I hadn’t insisted we go to Coventry—”

“ ‘But I was too stubborn to admit my feelings,’ ” Mrs. Mering read, “ ‘and the next day I confronted him and demanded he apologize. He refused, we quarreled, and he threw me in the river, and then he kissed me, and oh, Mama, it was so romantic! Just like Shakespeare, whose plays my beloved husband is having me read, beginning with The Taming of the Shrew.’ ”

Mrs. Mering flung the letter down. “Reading books! That is the cause of all this! Mesiel, you should never have hired a servant who read books! I blame you entirely for this. Always reading Ruskin and Darwin and Trollope. Trollope! What sort of name is that for an author? And his name. Servants should have solid English names. ‘I used it when I worked for Lord Dunsany,’ he said. ‘Well, you’re certainly not using it here,’ I said. Of course what can one expect from a man who refused to dress for dinner? He read books, too. Dreadful socialist things. Bentham and Samuel Butler.”

“Who?” the Colonel said, confused.

“Lord Dunsany. Dreadful man, but he has a nephew who will inherit half of Hertfordshire and Tossie could have been received at Court, and now… now…”

She swayed and Terence reached for the smelling salts, but she waved them irritatedly away. “Mesiel! Don’t just sit there! Do something! There must be some way to stop them before it’s too late!”

“It’s too late,” Verity murmured.

“Perhaps not. Perhaps they only left this morning,” I said, gathering up the pages of the letter and scanning them. They were covered with Tossie’s flowery hand and dozens of exclamation points and underlinings and badly blotted in places. She should have bought a penwiper at the jumble sale, I thought irrelevantly.

“ ‘It is no use to try and stop us,’ ” I read. “ ‘By the time you receive this we shall already have been married in Surrey at a registrar’s office and will be on our way to our new home. My dearest husband — ah, that most precious of words! — feels that we will thrive better in a society less enslaved to the archaic class structure, a country where one can have whatever name he likes, and to that end, we sail for America, where my husband — ah, that sweet word again! — intends to earn his living as a philosopher. Princess Arjumand is accompanying us, for I could not bear to be separated from her as well as you, and Papa would probably kill her when he found out about the calico goldfish.’ ”

“My split-tailed nacreous ryunkin?” Colonel Mering said, starting up out of the chair. “What about it?”

“ ‘She ate the calico. Oh, dear, Papa, can you find it in your heart to forgive her as well as me?’ ”

“We must disown her,” Mrs. Mering said.

“We certainly must,” Colonel Mering said. “That ryunkin cost two hundred pounds!”

“Colleen!” Mrs. Mering said. “I mean, Jane! Stop snuffling and fetch my writing desk at once. I intend to write to her and tell her from this day forward we have no daughter.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said, wiping her nose on her apron. I stared after her, thinking about Colleen/Jane and Mrs. Chattisbourne calling all her maids Gladys, and trying to remember exactly what Mrs. Mering had said about Baine. “ ‘I used it when I worked for Lord Dunsany.’ ” And what had Mrs. Chattisbourne said that day we went to fetch things for the jumble sale? “I have always felt it is not the name that makes the butler, but training.”

Colleen/Jane came back into the room, carrying the writing desk and sniffling.

“Tocelyn’s name shall never be spoken again in this house,” Mrs. Mering said, sitting down at the writing table. “Henceforth her name shall never cross my lips. All of Tocelyn’s letters shall be returned unopened.” She took out a pen and ink.

“How will we know where to send the letter telling her she’s disowned if we don’t open her letters?” Colonel Mering said.

“It’s too late, isn’t it?” Verity said bleakly to me. “There’s nothing we can do.”

I wasn’t listening. I gathered up the pages of the letter and turned them over, looking for the end.

“From this day forth I shall wear mourning,” Mrs. Mering said. “Jane, go upstairs and press my black bombazine. Mesiel, when anyone asks you, you must say our daughter died.”

I located the end of the letter. Tossie had signed the letter, “Your repentant daughter, Tocelyn,” and then scratched “Tocelyn” out and signed her married name.

“Listen to this,” I said to Verity, and began reading.

“ ‘Please tell Terence that I know he will never get over me, but that he must try, and not to begrudge us our happiness, for Baine and I were fated to be together.’ ”

“If she’s truly gone and married this person,” Terence said, the light dawning, “then I’m released from my engagement.”

I ignored him. “ ‘My darling William does not believe in Fate,’ ” I persisted, “ ‘and says that we are creatures of Free Will, but he believes that wives should have opinions and ideas of their own, and what else can it have been but Fate? For had Princess Arjumand not disappeared, we should never have gone to Coventry—’ ”

“Don’t,” Verity said, “please.”

“You have to hear the rest of it,” I said, “ ‘—to Coventry. And had I not seen the footed firugeal urn, we should never have come together. I will write when we are settled in America. Your repentant daughter,’ ” I read, emphasizing each word, “ ‘Mrs. William Patrick Callahan.’ ”