“I wonder,” said Lord Arthur.
“Talking of Miss Felicity, I had the most awful shock t'other week.”
“See a ghost?”
“Yes, how did you guess! Have you heard of the Princess Felicity of Brasnia?”
“Of where? My dear Dolph, there is no such country.”
“There is. Everyone's heard of it. Somewhere around Russia.” Dolph waved a chubby hand to the east. “As I was saying, all London has been abuzz with talk of this princess. You know, her beauty is said to be rare and her jewels magnificent. She has been in residence all winter, but no one had seen her. But last week, she went out driving for the first time. What a sensation! People fighting and screaming to get a look at her. At first, I didn't see her face, I was so knocked back with the idea of someone wearing a diamond tiara in the middle of Hyde Park during the day. Then I looked at her properly and nearly dropped down in a faint. I could swear I was looking at Miss Felicity Channing.”
Lord Arthur let the reins drop, and the horses slowed to an amble. “And…?” he prompted.
“I rode straight up to her carriage and, like a fool, I cried, ‘Miss Felicity! You are alive!’ She had one of those double glasses, and she raised it at me and looked at me with such hauteur that I nearly sank. ‘You were saying somezink?’ she asked, and of course, I realized all at once it was not Miss Felicity at all. How could it be? I stammered out my apologies, and she bowed her beautiful little head with those fantastic diamonds flashing and burning, and she said, ‘We are giffink a rout on the tenth. You come?’ I gave her my card and swore that nothing would keep me away. I'm the envy of all the fellows. Everyone desperately fighting to see if they can get an invite, sending presents and poems, and lying in wait outside her door. Duffy Gordon-Pomfret even slept on her doorstep, but her butler, a most odd man, came out, shook him awake, read him the parable of the talents, then told him if he had nothing better to do with his time, he might be better employed in finding a job of work. Work!” said Dolph, shaking his head in amazement.
“I would like to attend that rout,” said Lord Arthur slowly.
“I'm sure you would,” said Dolph gleefully. “But you can't. All of London wants to get through her door.”
“When did you plan to return to London?”
“Well, unless you're going to throw me out, I meant to get back around the eighth to collect a new suit of evening clothes from the tailor.”
“Call on Princess Felicity,” said Lord Arthur, “and tell her your friend, Lord Arthur Bessamy, wishes to meet her, and see what she says. I shall take you back to London myself.”
Dolph looked huffy. It was not often he was invited to a rout from which his rich and elegant friend was excluded. Then his face lightened. “I'll ask,” he said cheerfully. “But she's bound to refuse. Now, when am I to meet your beloved?”
“If you mean Miss Barchester, then say so,” said Lord Arthur curtly. “This afternoon, at four, for tea.”
Dolph could not believe his eyes when he was introduced to Miss Barchester. He thought she looked as if one of the marble statues on the terrace of her home had come to life. She even had thick white eyelids and a small thinlipped curved smile.
Lord Arthur, teacup in hand, was standing by the fireplace talking to Mr. Barchester. Mr. Barchester was a plump, rounded man with a jolly face, and his wife, dressed in chintz, looked like an overstuffed sofa. How two such cheerful individuals could have produced the pale and chilly Martha Barchester was beyond Dolph. He found that lady was eyeing him with a gray, cold look. Her gaze dropped from his face and fastened on the area of shirt that was bulging out from under his waistcoat. Dolph always felt his clothes took on a nasty life of their own the minute they left the hands of his valet. His waistcoats tried to move up to his chin, his shirts separated themselves from his breeches, the strings at the knees of his breeches untied themselves, and the starch left all his cravats a bare half an hour after he had put them on.
His teacup rattled in the saucer as Miss Barchester began to speak. “Our fashions become more extreme, do you not think, Mr. Godolphin?”
“I… I…” bleated Dolph.
“Yes, it is bad enough when the ladies adopt styles of semi-nudity and wear their waistlines up around their armpits. Now,
“Indeed,” said Dolph. “I fear London fashion cannot have had a chance to see you, Miss Barchester, for all the ladies adopt the high waistline.”
“Are you contradicting me by any chance, Mr. Godolphin?”
“No, no. I…”
“Good. Male fashions are every bit as ridiculous. Why do you think so many men aspire to be Beau Brummells when they do not possess either his air or figure?” Her pale eyes fastened again on Dolph's area of shirt.
“Blessed if I know,” said Dolph crossly.
“London fashions,” pursued Miss Barchester, “are distasteful to me.”
“Then, it's as well you ain't in London,” pointed out Dolph. He took a swig of tepid tea and eyed her over the rim of his cup.
“But I shall be. I am thinking of persuading Mama and Papa to take me for a few weeks. I aim to… how do the vulgar put it?…
Dolph looked at her curiously. Could she be funning? Or was her vanity so great that she really thought she could impress society?
But she was his best friend's fiancee. He forced himself to be gallant. “Well, by Jove, Miss Barchester, the ladies of London will be agog to see the fair charmer who has stolen the heart of such a hardened bachelor as Lord Arthur.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Barchester sweetly.
Dolph blinked in amazement. This engagement to one of the most eligible men in the country had quite gone to Miss Barchester's head. What on earth did Arthur see in the creature?
At that moment Lord Arthur strolled over to join them. “You are making me jealous, the pair of you,” he teased. “I saw you, rattling away there like old friends.”
Miss Barchester at his arrival on the scene became quiet and submissive. The wings of her brown hair shone softly in the candlelight, and the smooth drapery of her old-fashioned gown fell in straight lines from her waist to the floor like a medieval garment. She kept her eyes demurely lowered.
“By George!” thought Dolph, alarmed. “Arthur thinks he's got himself a meek, old-fashioned wife.”
At least Lord Arthur could be counted on not to ask his friend's opinion of Miss Barchester or discuss her in any way. And that was a mercy. For Dolph knew he would be hard put to it to think of anything good to say about her.
On the road home, he remembered the princess's rout and at the same time decided to do his uttermost to secure Lord Arthur an invitation. Anyone who saw the fairy-tale princess could never look with any complacency on such an antidote as Martha Barchester.
Mr. Palfrey told his butler, Anderson, to tell the boatmen to be ready to set off at dawn the next day. The search must go on.
Anderson bowed and then went off to confide in Mrs. Jessop, not for the first time, that they had been mistaken in Mr. Palfrey. He must have loved Miss Felicity very much the way he searched and searched for her poor body.
Once he had gone, Mr. Palfrey darted to the door of the library and turned the key in the lock. Lovingly, he spread the castle blueprints out on the table before him.
In her haste, Miss Chubb had forgotten to shut the door of the priest's hole properly. Some months after Felicity's “death,” Mr. Palfrey, in one of his feverish hunts for the jewels, had noticed the crack in the wall and had discovered the hiding place. And that is how he had found the plans. He had searched the priest's hole thoroughly and had found the high ledge and the clean square in the dust that showed that a large box had recently rested on it.
From there he had deduced Felicity must have had the jewels in hiding and had taken them with her. It stood to reason that she would not have dared run away without any money. So the Channing jewels must have gone to the bottom of the ocean and, at least they, unlike the bodies, could not have been carried out to sea.
That was the reason he had the sea under the part of the cliff where they had gone over, searched each day so
