It was getting dark. The servants were turning on the lights, both inside and outside. As soon as the sun had set Jane left the house and went to the small garden gate. Philip, to her surprise, was already there, waiting for her. When he caught sight of her, he rushed forward, but something made him halt ten feet away from her.

  “You asked for me, Miss?” Philip said, trying to sound calm.

  “Yes.”

  She had trouble speaking. Her throat seemed bound tight by emotions. After a moment, she succeeded in moving her mouth and Jane began to explain to Philip that Newton was trying to blackmail her. She told him of the letter he possessed and the promises he had made to use it against her by going to her father and her fiancé. She expected Philip to react furiously, but he didn’t. He had changed as a result of the past few trying months.

  “Don’t let this trouble you,” he said, without a hint of emotion. “I will talk to Newton.”

  He tipped his hat and was about to turn around and leave, when Jane took a step forward.

  “Don’t leave me this way! Say something to me,” she said, desperately.

  “I have nothing to say. My father is dead, but his wishes live on in me.”

  “Farewell, Philip,” she said, as tears came to her eyes. “I’ll be married soon. We won’t see each other anymore. Farewell. Just remember that I love you.”

  She turned around to flee into the dark garden.

  “Love!” cried Philip. “How can I ever think of love and happiness after what I did? Tell me how to forget. Tell me how to remove my memory. I had dreams of a life of perfect happiness with you by my side. Dreams! But every time I think I remember that my dreams have turned to nightmares and I’m filled with despair.”

  Jane’s eyes shined brightly for a moment.

  “He still loves me,” she thought.

  Philip shook his head wildly, turned around and walked away quickly. Jane looked at him for a moment.

  “You have his body. I have his heart,” she murmured.

  She went back inside. The expression on her face was so apparent that Count Bletchley could not help, but notice it. He complimented her on her lovely appearance.

  She smiled in reply. The count was mesmerized by her eyes, which had a shade of earnestness mixed with playfulness. Jane had long ago decided never to allow her future husband to see the dark side of her character. She only wished to show him her bright side. As he was admiring her, she was thinking of Philip.

  “Will he be able to save me?”

  Philip kept his word. Early the next day James, the faithful servant, came by her house and handed her a packet. Alone in her room, she saw to her surprise it didn’t only contain the two letters the Weasel had spoken of, but photographs of all her letters to Philip. There were more than a hundred letters in all. Some were very long and very compromising. Others were short, but still at least indiscreet. Her first thought was to burn them immediately. She set fire to the logs in the fireplace. As she looked at the fire her eyes fell on one of the photographs. She read a few lines she had written months before, when she was in love and the man she loved was in love with her. She decided not to burn the letters and photographs. They were too precious to her. She hid the packet in the same place as she had hidden the letters, sent to her by Philip.

  Philip had given Newton the sixty thousand shilling he demanded. In addition he still had Philip’s promissory notes for another twenty thousand shilling. This sum, in addition to what he had already saved and the sale of his cottage allowed Newton to leave Bourne on Trent and start a new endeavor in London, where his talents as a blackmailer would bring him more rewards and where there were no bushes or threes behind which a man and his rifle could hide on a dark an lonely night. Not three days later the village found out that he had left in the middle of the night. He had taken Matilda with him. The old widow was furious and openly accused Miss Worrall of having helped him in taking her daughter away, which deprived her of her daughter’s help in her old age. The woman, who had acted as his housekeeper in the small cottage and who had been abandoned without a word, told everyone, who wished to listen that all Newton’s legal knowledge had been learned in prison, where he had spent ten years.

  In spite of all accusations and gossip, Miss Worrall was delighted at the departure of her tormentor. She was relieved that she would no longer risk meeting her former accomplice in her every day walks. She heard that Philip, too, was going to London with his wife. It was Mr. Harcourt, who told her that his daughter, the Lady of Swaffham, wouldn’t return to the countryside for a long time and possibly not ever.

  Jane breathed more easily. For the first time since she had set her eyes on Philip, it seemed that all the threatening clouds, which had darkened her life for so long, were all of a sudden disappearing before the sun. Her future looked bright and uncomplicated. She could now busy herself with the preparations for her marriage.

  Every day Jane painstakingly measured the love, which Howard lavished on her and like a good shopkeeper she did her utmost to increase it. As the days wore on and her anxieties subsided, she more and more thought of London. The admiration with which her husband, who had lived in London for many years, surrounded her gave her the idea she might be a success in London’s high society. She had conquered Howard completely, as any other man would have been under similar circumstances, but she dreamed of more.

  On the day of Miss Jane’s wedding she dazzled the onlookers with her beauty. Her wedding dress was magnificent, London made, and her face was radiant with happiness. If he had looked closer, Howard would have seen that it was a mere mask, which she had put on to hide her true feelings. She knew the old rumor mill was still active and there were a lot of curious eyes fixed on her as she left church. The crowd, as was usual, formed a line for her to pass through, but she saw many glances of dislike and jealousy. A bigger problem for her future happiness awaited her on her arrival at Bletchley Manor. The newly wed pair was driven directly after the ceremony to the house. What should have been a moment of joy turned into one of embarrassment. The first person she met, when she and her husband entered the house was Charles. He came forward to welcome her. Strong as she was, the sight of him startled her and made her blush. Charles had time to prepare himself for this dreaded encounter. He was not shaken and his face showed no sign of knowing her or recognizing her. Though he greeted her respectfully, Countess Bletchley thought she saw something in his eyes, an expression of arrogance for knowing her past and contempt for her for knowing her past. She had seen this before in Newton’s eyes.

  “I cannot stand that man,” she said to herself.

  She could ask her husband to dismiss Charles, but he would obviously ask for a reason and this reason she could not give him or better said, she did not want him to know. She decided to do what she always did, when encountering an immobile force. So she waited. She did not have to wait for long, however, for some good excuse to offer itself instead of her true reason. Charles was full of energy, when he was working for Lord Bletchley in London. On his return to Bletchley Manor he had renewed his attachment to a certain woman with whom he had been entangled before in Nottingham. His work was suffering under the strains of this love affair and words had to be exchanged between master and employee soon. Jane wished it to be quick and clean as she didn’t want too many words spoken between the men.

  They had been married for two weeks. In the afternoon Howard proposed that they should go for a stroll. Jane agreed. She changed her clothes and shoes and soon they were on the road, happy and lively as two children visiting their grandparents’ farm in the summer. As they walked through a tree lined path, they heard the bark of a dog in the bushes. It was Luke. He rushed out of the bushes onto the path and standing on his hind legs, he tried to lick Jane’s face as he had done so many times before.

  “Help, Howard!” she exclaimed.

  Her husband drove away the joyously barking dog.

  “Don’t be alarmed, dearest,” he said, “he just wants to play.”

  “I was almost frightened to death,” she answered faintly.

  She poked at him with her umbrella. But the dog thought she wished to play with him, so he began to run in circles around her, barking delightedly the whole time.

  “This dog seems to know you, Jane,” said the count.

  “That’s impossible!” she replied.

  Luke ran up to her and licked her hand. The count laughed.

  “If he knows me, his memory is better than mine,” continued Jane. “This dog scares me, Howard. Let us go.”

  They walked away. Howard would have forgotten the dog immediately had not Luke, delighted at seeing an old friend, continued to follow them.

  “How amusing,” exclaimed the count. “Why would he keep following us?”

  He waved at a farm laborer, who was working on a field nearby and said, “I say, my man, do you know whose dog this is?”

  “Yes, sir, it belongs to young Lord Swaffham. Don’t worry. He doesn’t bite.”

  “Of course,” said Jane, immediately. “I do know this dog. Now I remember seeing him at Mrs. Jarrett’s house. I must’ve given it some food for it to still remember me. He was always with Matilda, you know, the girl, who ran of with that horrible man Newton. Here, Luke, here!”

  The dog rushed to her. She petted him on the head and the back. Howard didn’t say anything about the sudden reappearance of his wife’s memory of the dog. Still a feeling of doubt had arisen in his mind. Jane knew she had made a mistake. She reproached herself for her stupidity. If she had immediately said she knew the dog and that it belonged to Lord Swaffham, her husband wouldn’t have thought anymore of it. Her folly had turned a nothing into a small event.

  The count’s love for her seemed to have changed after that afternoon. He was more quiet and sometimes Jane saw him look at her from behind his newspaper with what she thought was a look of suspicion in his eyes. She thought long and hard about how she could best make him forget the event. She decided that for the rest of her life she would have to act like she didn’t like or even more feared dogs. She asked the servants to chain all the count’s dogs and whenever she saw a dog, she stepped away in feigned fear. It didn’t do anything to allay the count’s suspicions. Her happy life turned into one of suspicion and anxiety in which she had to think before she talked and fear meeting anyone, who might say more than she was willing to share about her past with her husband. She could not breathe freely in Bourne on Trent. She wished to leave and didn’t care where to. It was their plan to go away for a few days immediately after the wedding, but they hadn’t gotten round to it yet. Jane kept reminding her husband of their plans, but that was all she could do.

  It was evident that a storm was brewing. It exploded on a clear autumn day. Jane was in the drawing room. She was looking through her window, when a group of excited men rushed into the courtyard of the Manor house. They were carrying something under a white sheet, clearly distinguishable as a dead body. There were blood stains on the sheet, showing that someone had met with a violent death.

  Jane froze with fear. Her legs did not want to stand up, so she remained seated on her chair, looking through the window. She wondered who the dead man was. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the dead body. Suddenly she stood up.

  “Howard!” she exclaimed.

  That morning her husband in the company of his friend Colonel Robinson, Charles and a local butcher named Rogan, had gone out for a day’s shooting. Something must have happened to one of the party. Jane sighed with relief, when moments later she saw her husband entering the courtyard, supported by Colonel Robinson and Rogan. His face was wet with sweat and deadly pale. He seemed hardly able to walk. One of the men lifted the sheet from the body to show the butler the face of the dead man. It was Charles. Jane shrieked, but immediately gained control of her composure. She sighed. There was no longer any need to find a way to remove the silent witness to her former life from her present life. She did not have to fear him anymore. He had been silenced for ever. Jane’s heart seemed to beat more peacefully. She walked to the entrance of the house. She met Colonel Robinson, who seized her by the arm and said hoarsely, “Go to your room, Mrs. Worrall!”

  “But what happened?”

  “Something horrible. Now go to your room. Don’t stay here, I beg of you. Your husband will be here shortly.”

  Howard appeared in the doorway. The colonel pushed Jane back into the drawing room. Her husband followed them, however. He looked at his wife with a face full of horror. Then he extended his arms and pressed his wife to his heart, bursting into tears.

  “Ah!” cried Colonel Robinson, relieved. “He has come around. I thought he had lost his mind.”

  The colonel explained to her after a lot of questions and many vague answers that Charles had died by accident. That was the story the colonel told. The truth was not as innocent. Charles had met his death as a result of Jane’s actions, quite as much as Lord Swaffham had done. He died, because he knew too much.

  The truth was that after lunch, Howard, who had drunk too much, began to poke fun at Charles. He talked about his mysterious absences and said that some woman must be at the bottom of his behavior. At first Charles laughed along with the others. Mr. Bletchley didn’t leave well enough alone and excited by drink he made some personal remarks regarding the woman his right hand man loved deeply. Charles became incensed. His anger made the count angry and he went on to tell his employee that he could no longer permit such things happening in his household. He ordered him to stay away from a woman, who was obviously not worthy of anyone’s love or respect. Charles heard this last taunt with increased fury.

  “Who gave you the right to talk like that about my woman?” he said as he sprang to his feet. “You, of all men, do not have that right.”

  Howard sprang to his feet also and threw a punch. It hit Charles in the mouth. There was blood on his lips.

  “Why talk about my woman’s virtue,” he cried, “when it’s your wife, who loves another man and has...”

  He had no time to finish his sentence, because Howard took his rifle and hit him on the head. The blow was so forceful, the rifle so heavy that Charles sank to the ground and never regained his consciousness.

  Mr. Bletchley kept the truth from his wife, because he loved her and his love for her was true, a desperate kind of love. As Charles never regained consciousness and none of the other men wished to see the count go to prison, they decided to hide the truth from all. They would say that Charles had fallen from a tree.

  The count was acquitted of all blame, thanks to Colonel Robinson’s and Rogan’s testimony. Mr. Bletchley’s conscience was not as easily placated as the Coroner’s was. The young woman whom Charles had loved so much had given birth to their son. This was the reason or his frequent absences. Howard found her with the help of a lawyer and without giving her any reason for his generosity, he told her that he would make sure her son John, would never go hungry of be without a roof over his head.

  It wasn’t long after this event that Count Bletchley decided he wished to return to London. His wife could not have been happier. For her own reasons, she too wished to leave Bourne on Trent. Buoyed by this, Jane lost no time looking for ways to get even with the woman, who had stolen her man. She hired a maid, who used to be in the employ of Renee Harcourt, when she was still living in London, but who had been left behind in Bourne on Trent, because of her love of gossip. Through her Jane found out that before her marriage to Philip, Renee had loved Baron Thomas St. Ives.

  The marriage between Philip and Renee was without love. The icy walls that both of them had built around their hearts, one, because he didn’t wish to love again and the other, because she already loved someone else, stood between them and became bigger and taller. They had no one to show them a better way. They had no one to urge them to be kind to each other or at least try. Both were haughty and had decided that what was would always remain.

  After his father had died, Philip was overwhelmed by the presence of his father everywhere at Swaffham Manor. He was in the house, when Philip tried to sleep. He was on the fields, when Philip tried to harvest the vegetables. He was in the woods, when Philip was hunting. He announced that he would move to London. Mr. Harcourt highly approved of this, because in his son-in-law’s absence, he asked for permission to live at Swaffham Manor, which he received and there he could play the role of country squire to his heart’s desire.

  As soon as Renee entered their new residence in London, a chill went down her spine. She felt herself to be the most unfortunate woman in the world. Where as the Manor house at the Swaffham estate was her domain and she could do anything she wanted and where every time she went for a stroll, she was greeted by familiar faces and respectful tipping of the hat, in London she was isolated and alone. She was miserable. The late lord, pinching every cent in his country domain, had spared no shilling to furbish his house in London with the most extravagant of furniture, carpets and linen. It looked more a cathedral than a home.

  James had been sent to prepare for the arrival of Philip and his wife. When they arrived they could almost imagine that they had only left the house for a short time, so perfect had the arrangements been. James had hired an army of servants to keep the house on a footing to do honor to the traditions of the House of Swaffham. He had filled the rooms with footmen and maids, the kitchens with cooks and the garages with chauffeurs and luxury cars, which stood ready to go anywhere they were ordered to go.

  Though the house was bustling with excitement, the young mistress didn’t seem to feel it was home. It seemed to her dead and empty and more a mausoleum than a place of happiness. She felt as if something in the air of the house was pressing on her chest and making it difficult for her to breathe. She felt a weight on her shoulder, but could not think of what it was that was troubling her. Philip, who did not wish to socialize with anyone, had forbidden her to renew her acquaintance with her old friends in London. She had no one to confide in and so remained sad and alone as the weeks went by. More and more her thoughts began to wander once again to Thomas St. Ives. He lived not far away. She cursed her father and herself for not marrying the man she loved. Instead of sitting in her room looking out of the window, she could’ve been wandering hand in hand with the man she loved in some sequestered spot in Hyde Park beneath the clear blue sky.