back her head with bitter laughter. “The English have a curious way with language, do they not? Mr. Crawford speaks of duty, when he should say betrayal, and Captain Fielding—Captain Fielding spoke when any man of honour should better have remained silent. From the services of our friends, my cousin and I have both of us been reduced to misery.” She rose in a single fluid movement, swung her red cloak about her form, and turned to Mr. Crawford a countenance as remote as heaven.
“Thank you, Mr. Crawford, for the ndulgence of your time; but I fear I must return now to the Grange. There is much to be done, and one less pair of hands to do it; and I hold my cousin's concerns too dear to neglect his business in his absence. You will forgive me.”
Mr. Crawford cleared his throat, and sank his chin in his cravat, and seemed at a loss for words.
“May I offer my company, Mademoiselle, and my assistance?” I enquired.
Seraphine only shook her head. “You are kindness itself, Miss Austen, but I should like to be alone at present. We will speak again, I hope, in a few days’ time.”
That she envisioned some meeting by the Golden Lion, in the midst of Sidmouth's inquest, I little doubted; and felt a deep foreboding. A look for Mr. Crawford convinced me that the gentleman was similarly lost in thought; but he roused himself sufficiently to order his carriage, a measure of solicitude for which I was thankful, having walked my fill of Dorset's hills for one morning.
Our few moments’ journey was rendered tedious enough in being passed in virtual silence, before Seraphine was deposited on the Grange's doorstep; and at the coachman's turning his horses’ heads, I had a final glimpse of her—pale, upright, and clothed in fire, as she toiled her lonely way through the courtyard.
20 September 1804
in & wee hours
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I COULD NOT SLEEP, TONIGHT, FOR TOSSING AND TURNING IN THE grip of tortured thoughts—all that I observed and witnessed today being fresh upon my mind. A thousand expressions and attitudes paraded before my wearied eyes— Mr. Sidmouth's warmth, as he handed the boy Toby his crutches; the face of Seraphine, as she stared across the sunlit Channel towards France; her tears, in considering Captain Fielding's mysterious behaviour towards herself; and her raging loss in the face of Sidmouth's seizure. Mr. Crawford, too, would not be banished from my mind—for such a heavy burden did he bear, in debating, as he must, his friend's guilt or innocence!
The heaviest share in sleeplessness, however, I must accord to the proper place, as arising from my own indecision regarding Sidmouth. In truth, I knew not what to think of the incriminating hoofjprints. A plausible case might be made for another's having taken a mount from the Grange's stables, and done away with the Captain in SidmouuVs guise; but I felt all the truth of Mr. Crawford's conjecture—that none might harbour towards the Captain such enmity as the master of High Down.
—Or none, perhaps, than the smugglers and their lord, who undoubtedly bore towards the Captain a mortal grudge, for having bent his efforts to disturb their clandestine trade—but since all the world stood ready to proclaim Geoffrey Sidmouth the very Reverend, such an avenue led me nowhere.
Or did it?
I sat up in bed, transfixed by a thought.
Captain Fielding had supposed that Seraphine served as the Reverend's living signal, turning about the cliffs in her wide red cloak; he had offered it as his opinion that the very night that followed upon the heels of such a walk, should find the smugglers’ landing. I had strolled with Mademoiselle myself this morning, and observed her stand like a stone on die cliffs above the sea, for whole moments together. No ship had I observed, it was true; but I had been much preoccupied with my own interrogation, and its effect upon the lady.
I threw back the bedclothes and reached for my boots.
The conjectures of a fevered brain, made less reasonable by lack of sleep, will bear all the weight of rational thought in the mind of the conjeeturer, however ridiculous their merits might seem by the light of day. Full many a midnight thought have I entertained with alacrity, only to reject it over my breakfast chocolate as excessively disordered. Tonight, however, I was possessed of too much impatience to await the dawn; I felt I must know whether Sidmouth was the Reverend or no, and I knew with all