I said, as I grasped the Captain's gloved fingers and found the carriage step. “I would venture to say that even your place of abode is not without design. With no other object than the closest scrutiny, can you have chosen to settle in a house not a half-mile from High Down Grange. For no other reason than to calculate his ruin, can you have chosen a neighbour so abhorrent to you.”
How my heart reacted to this knowledge of Captain Fielding's design, I cannot say. I confess to a confusion of emotions—some all in admiration of his penetration and bravery, and others, having more to do with Geoffrey Sidmouth, that were marked by regret. But I could not deny the calculation of Fielding's words, and the careful study behind them; I myself had spent two nights at High Down Grange, and had seen the red-cloaked girl with a lanthorn bobbing along the cliffs. What had Mr. Sidmouth said to Seraphine, in those few phrases of French? Something about the men, and the dogs, and the bay. And the name of the botde-green boat on the beach—IM Gascogne. Presumably a cargo was expected the very night of our precipitate arrival—hence the hostility with which we were met, and the stable boy's levelled blunderbuss. Seraphine LeFevre was undoubtedly dispatched to divert the men and their wares to another place of hiding, for the length of our unfortunate stay.
“You are possessed of a singular understanding,” Captain Fielding said, his eyes intent upon my face. We stood thus a moment in the drive while Jarvis remounted the box. “But then, I have allowed myself an unwonted frankness in your company. It may be that our minds are formed for such effortless meeting.”
“I am happy to learn that you are not entirely languishing in retirement, Captain Fielding” I rejoined, deflecting his gallantry with a smile. “Indeed, I think you are possibly the most active former Naval officer I have ever met.”
He threw back his blond head and laughed. “You have found me out, Miss Austen. I am, indeed, as yet employed—though on behalf of His Majesty's revenues rather than his seamen. I shall have the Reverend yet— and when I do, I shall be very much surprised if he is not Geoffrey Sidmouth.”
1 In her letter to Cassandra, written from Lyme Sept 14, 1804, Austen refers to Miss Armstrong without revealing her Christian name; in another letter dated April 21, 1805, she mentions renewing the acquaintance in Bath. We learn here for the first time that Miss Armstrong's name was Lucy. — Editor's nete.
2 Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is best known as a wealthy lawyer of the Georgian period who advocated Utilitarianism: the belief that society should be regulated by inherent principles, much as his rough contemporary Adam Smith (1723-1790) believed economies operated by self-evident market forces. Chief among these principles was that social action should produce the “greatest good for the greatest number”—a frankly democratic notion. Bentham attracted a coterie of “philosophical radicals,” who, by 1815, advocated universal suffrage in England. Reverend Austen is referring here, however, to a famous passage from Bentham's 1789 work, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and legislation. —Editor's note. 3 Mr. Sidmouth is paraphrasing Kant The philosopher actually wrote that he was unable to find “any being capable of laying claim to the distinction of being the final end of creation.” (Critique of Judgment, 1790). —Editors note.
4 The search for fossils was well advanced along the Dorset coast by the time Austen visited it in 1804. A local schoolgirl, Mary Anning, would be credited with the discovery of the world's first ichthyosaur in the cliffs between Lyme and Charmouth in 1811, when she was just twelve years old. —Editor's note.
5 Ann RadclifTe Is best remembered for the Gothic romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho, which Austen satirized in Northanger Abbey. She was, along with her contemporaries Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Smith, and Fanny Burney, one of the women novelists Austen read and admired. —Editor's note.
6 Nuncheon was a common term for food taken between breakfast and dinner—which in the country was usually eaten in the late afternoon, around four o'clock—since the term luncheon, or lunch, did not exist. —Editor's note.
7 Eliza refers here to the March 1804 execution of the Due D'Enghien, who was of royal Bourbon blood. Napoleon had the duke seized, imprisoned, secredy uied, and executed, in the wake of several Royalist plots to dethrone him. —Editor's note.
8 Venturers were what we might call venture capitalists—titled or simply wealthy