observed, with a careless air. “Quite unlike the afternoon when Captain Fielding and I espied the smuggler's cutter abandon its cargo, not far off the end of the Cobb. On that occasion the seas were quite stiff, and the Navy ship that followed in pursuit made but poor progress, and came all too late behind.”
There was a delicate pause. Then, with what I judged to be an effort at composure, the mademoiselle enquired,
“You were well acquainted with Captain Fielding?”
‘Only a little. And ¥011?”
“As you say—only a little,” she said, with a quick smile, that as quickly fled.
“He seems to have been everywhere acknowledged as possessing an admirable character.”
“Indeed.”
A few more paces in silence, and I made another attempt. “However little you thought yourself acquainted with Captain Fielding, your well-being and happiness were clearly of some concern to the gentleman. He spoke well of you in my hearing on several occasions, and expressed some anxiety regarding your—situation—at the Grange.”
“I do not doubt he mentioned my situation, as you put it,” Seraphine said, her contempt flaring unchecked. “Captain Fielding was an officious and arrogant man, who little cared what damage his concern might do.”
“You regarded his interest as interference?” I rejoined quickly.
She turned and studied my countenance quizzically, while I endeavoured to assume as clear an aspect of innocence as my own sense of guilt should allow.
“Would not you have done the same, Miss Austen, when a gentieman's meddling occasioned the worst sort of calumny, and the grossest of lies, to be heaped upon a cousin you esteemed as dearly as a brother? But how come you to wonder so much about the affairs of people, of whom you know so little?”
This was abruptness indeed; and I felt the chastening power of her words as severely as a lash. Groping for some justification, however, I fell back upon events.
“It is just that the Captain's tragic end, Mademoiselle, has thrown his whole life into question—do not you agree?” I gestured towards the road, just visible at the foot of the downs behind our backs, and emptied now of any conveyance. “How strange to think that the gallant Captain shall drive the Charmouth road no more, when only a week ago I sat beside him in his barouche. The suddenness of events is inexplicable; and the mind struggles for comprehension/’
My excuses availed me nothing, however; Seraphine had stiffened beside me, and was grown as remote as marble—expressionless, opaque, and no doubt chill to the touch. My words might have been all unspoken.
I perceived no alternative but persistence, all the same. “The news was quite shocking, was it not?”
She stirred herself at last, but betrayed nothing of her emotion. “The news of the Captain's death? I suppose it was. Certainly? had not looked for it.”
“But you found it not incredible?”
“I found it to be justice, Miss Austen, however curiously achieved,” she cried, in some exasperation. “One cannot be otherwise than satisfied when justice is done.”
Whatever I had expected, it was hardly this—an avowal of nothing and everything at once.
“I do not pretend to understand you, Mademoiselle. Had the Captain committed some infamy of which I am unaware?”
She studied the sea as though my words had gone unspoken, for the space of several heartbeats. I counseled patience to myself, and stood as still as a stone, reflecting that many a wild thing will come to eat from the hand, if a suitable caution is preserved. At length, however, I observed to my horror that silent tears were coursing down her cheeks; and it was perhaps more terrible still that she did nothing to impede their flow, or disguise their traces, so lost in contemplation was she.
“Mademoiselle LeFevre,” I said, laying a hand along her red-cloaked arm, “whatever is the matter? What can he have done to you?”
She shook her head, and turned a watery smile upon my anxious face. “Never mind, Miss Austen. Whatever it was, it is past all remedy now, and all forgiveness. What le Chevalier did, was done in passion; and so his life has ended. There is nothing further worth asking/’
Le Chevalier. That name again; and spoken now with a depth of bitterness that could not but make it ironic. To probe the girl's natural reticence would be unseemly, and beyond even my application; my gentle education had not taught me how to so offend propriety, even did I claim the pursuit of innocence as my spur. There were others— Mrs. Barnewall rose immediately to mind—who might shed some light on the