The Alchemist's Daughter Part 23

"There is often recrimination after a death. We all look for someone to blame. He and I are theologically a thousand miles apart. He sees me as a radical. Where religion is involved, everything is connected." But as usual when his wife was mentioned, evasion soon followed, accompanied by an opaqueness in his eyes.

It struck me how unequal our knowledge of each other was-that he had always known everything about me while keeping his own history dark. "You probably thought it didn't matter that you left in a hurry," I said. "After all, I'm nothing to you. My father was right, by the way. Palingenesis was successful. I found out who my mother was and how I came to be born at Selden. You must have thought me such a fool all this time, behaving like a great lady taking the front pew in church, sharing my father's life, when really I am n.o.body. You should have told me the truth, Shales. You might have spared me a great deal of trouble. And as you probably know, my maid, Sarah, is pregnant with my husband's child." He nodded. Of course he knew. I began to limp back down the aisle. "In a fit of rage, I sent her away. I didn't know what I was doing. So now I have to go to London and bring her back, if she'll come, or at least offer to adopt the baby."

"You shouldn't travel in this frail state," he said, with cruel formality.

"It's my duty. Of course I'll go. It won't be the first time an unwanted child will find a home at Selden." I could barely speak. All these weeks I had longed just to see him again, but now it was as if a fatal wound had reopened. We were trapped as ever by the reality of our two separate lives.

St. Edelburga's little chapel was so dim that I couldn't at first make out where I had left my father's staff. Everything was gray with the grayness of a cloudy evening: the stone floor, old Sir Selden with his book and his sword, even the stained gla.s.s. My legs hurt when I stooped down, and the staff rolled away from my stiff hand. Shales picked it up and pressed the handle into my palm. "I never thought you a fool," he said.

"Well, good."

"But I did think about you constantly. Since I first saw you, scarcely an hour has pa.s.sed when you haven't been on my mind. Your father did me a kindness by offering me the living here. I was running away from my old life; I thought that as there was no chance of happiness, I might as well be at Selden as anywhere. I remember taking Communion for the first time in this church, my thoughts as I picked up my book, the weariness I felt that I must start everything again. The doorway from the vestry was very low, and I was afraid of cracking my head. Then I crossed in front of your pew and saw your face, and by the time I reached the altar everything had changed because already you were unforgettable. It was that look of burning interest you gave me then-I'd never seen such intensity in a woman's eyes. And when you greeted me on the porch, you smiled. I thought to myself, That is a rare smile, perhaps not used often, and it would be worth a great deal to win another. I met you and your father in the forest one day, and I still remember how I walked home blindly afterward, hardly knew how I got home. I have never been able to walk through those woods since without remembering the mist of your breath in the air. You were in my blood after that. You haunted me. When your father asked me to call at the house, all I could think about was meeting you-in fact, I was so distracted that I was caught off guard and drawn into an argument with him. It's my greatest fault to be too rigid-far too rigid-in what I think I know about right and wrong. Afterward, I cursed myself for being so outspoken. What did my views on alchemy matter, I thought, when if I'd agreed to work with your father I might have met you every week? So I never stopped calling at the house, even though I got turned away first by your father then by Aislabie."

The saints in the wall paintings, the Selden clan under their tombs and bra.s.ses, the priestly heads on the tops of pillars, a Green Man and a.s.sorted gremlins in the bosses in the roof, and my poor father under his slab were all listening to Shales. "I promised myself that I'd never unsettle you with a hint or a word. I could only justify staying at Selden because I told myself that for your father's sake I should watch over you. But when you brought me to the laboratory on the night of the party, I knew that I was on the inside of your life, where I have wanted to be all along, but that I could only do you harm by being there. So I left."

In the sudden silence, there were hurried footsteps on the porch outside and a rattling of the iron door handle. "How could you harm me?" I whispered. I knew the answer, of course; it was his duty as a clergyman not to seduce the wives of his flock, even if a member of that flock was the faithless Aislabie.

Annie's voice called, "Mrs. Aislabie. Are you there? Mrs. Gill sent me to find you."

Shales said, "You don't know me, Mrs. Aislabie. I don't have a gift for love. I have done terrible wrong in the past."

"Mrs. Aislabie," Annie called again, with less certainty. Shales and I were tucked away out of sight in the chapel, a little apart from each other. I thought that if I had to walk away from him now, my flesh would tear. Annie's wooden soles came clacking up the aisle, and she called again, "Mrs. Aislabie."

I said, "I'm here, Annie," and there she was at my elbow. We had no more time. Her hair straggled across her face and wind gusted from among the gravestones through the open door. She gaped when she saw Shales, then grinned at him, and he was suddenly the clergyman as he shook her hand distractedly and asked after her family. Then she offered me her arm, he and I nodded at each other, and I was led away down the aisle.

The threshold was worn to a deep curve by centuries of Selden feet and there were two steep steps down to the porch, so I had to lean on her for balance. I didn't look back as I waited for her to close the door, but leaving that church so abruptly to go and find Sarah was the hardest thing I had ever done, harder than holding out my arm to be engrafted with smallpox, harder than adding saltpeter to the alchemical mixture, harder even than telling my father that I was pregnant with Aislabie's child.

Above the churchyard, the clouds had lifted suddenly and the light had turned golden and dusky. The twilight was laden with birdsong, and from a field beyond the village came excited shouts of children. Annie fastened the lych-gate behind us, then we walked the few yards to Mrs. Gill's cottage.

"You have overdone it," she said when she saw me. "You are very pale."

"I'm well."

"I'm not at all sure you should go tomorrow."

I kissed her cheek and went on through the hot little kitchen and along the brick path to the gate in the back wall. Selden in this light was transfigured; honeyed, eternal. I knew that whatever happened, I would remember every detail of the past hour, including the walk through Mrs. Gill's workaday strip of a garden and standing with my back to her gate. In those first, sudden moments after leaving Shales, I stood in a trance of love and grief, thinking that when I saw him again, there would be only one certainty: that everything would be changed.

[ 4 ].

THE NEXT DAY, I got up in the rainy dawn and stood shivering in my shift while Mrs. Gill and Annie manipulated me into the green dress.

Annie hardly seemed a promising companion, what with spare clothes spilling out of a bundle, food stowed in a fraying basket, and eyes huge with self-importance under a flapping hat brim. Her entire family came to the gates to wave us off: countless siblings, who clung to her legs as if she'd be away a year rather than weeks, as well as her grandmother, her mother, and the blacksmith himself, who patted her shoulder with fiery pride. I kept my distance, though he tilted his head at me in what I took to be approval.

In a few minutes, the village dropped away altogether, and we were swallowed up by dripping hedgerows so tall that we could see nothing of Selden along the valley behind us. I looked back one last time, but the lane was empty. After that, there was little to see but Gill's backside clothed in an ancient leather garment that wrinkled like a second skin. Annie's mouth dropped open, and her eyes swiveled to right and left as if she'd never seen a gate or hedge before. When we plunged into dense woods, Gill pulled his elbows tight to his body, and the horses flung their heads from side to side to shake water from their manes. Annie gawped up into the canopy of leaves, and water plopped into her mouth.

At the inn, Gill unloaded our boxes into the care of an ostler and stood in the rain with his hands hanging and the rain dripping from his hat brim. Then he climbed back into the cart, whistled to the horses, and disappeared. Annie and I sheltered under the gallery and stared after him, then went inside to watch the rain and an occasional burst of activity. I was conscious that Annie was a keen observer, eager to embrace every second of this rare escape from Selden. And she was not distracted and aching like me.

The servants seemed to do a great deal of hanging about and yelling at each other from one covered place to the other. I thought of Sarah, who had come here with her heap of boxes filled with my gowns, and I wished that living things did have a signature of some kind as my father had believed, so that she could have left something of herself for us to gather up as a sign that she was still alive.

There was a sudden bustle, the thud of hooves, and a bark of instruction as the stage thundered under the arch and into the confined s.p.a.ce of the yard. We cl.u.s.tered in the low doorway, and in a few minutes were swept into the coach. Despite our shortage of funds, I paid for Annie to sit inside, thinking that she would die of fright if her first sight of London was from the precarious height of the roof.

And there I was in a world far removed from the intensity and isolation of Selden, pressed close to a hook-nosed mother and her three daughters, one wriggling and straining in her nursemaid's arms, the others loudly disputing the right to a place near the window. The mother began a speech, supposedly for the benefit of her girls, about how the family was moving to a house in Audley Street, a very new and exclusive part of London south of the Oxford road, and how they would see little of their father due to his importance to the world of print now that his machines were turning out three broadsheets daily. She sighed and patted her chest, rolled her eyes, and mourned the loss of her quiet life in Buckingham, though with a self-satisfied smile on her lips.

It was near midnight when we were set down in Bread Street, by which time she had chosen furnishings, colors, and wall coverings for her rooms, pots for her kitchen, flowers for her garden, planned a month's menus, decided that she and her girls must be fitted with the latest striped gowns, and listed every sight in London they would visit by the autumn. She was met by her browbeaten husband and his coach, while I had to spend a precious half crown on a hackney carriage. The driver was bad-tempered already because of the rain and furious when he saw that there was a heap of boxes to load in after us, but I remembered one of the valuable lessons learned from Sarah, tossed my head, averted my eye, and drummed my toe until the boxes were safely stowed.

When we were inside, Annie spoke for the first time in five hours: "The lights." I realized how full of lanterns the streets were and how brilliant the London night compared to the dark of a cloudy night in Selden. The rain formed a sheet of yellow specks in the lamplight, and I felt a rising panic at being in the place of dead babies again, and of meeting Aislabie, who belonged here and had been sucked back into the city and all its temptations. It was also quite possible that the house would be closed up altogether. What would I do then?

But the Hanover Street house was ablaze. Lights shone from every floor, and when I peered into the bas.e.m.e.nt I saw a servant stooped over the hearth and the parrot's cage hanging in the open window. There was music, laughter, the c.h.i.n.k of gla.s.s-a card party.

I hammered on the door and a footman opened it, dressed in a new livery. He looked at me disdainfully, and then over my shoulder at Annie.

"Mrs. Aislabie," I said and swept past him, followed by Annie and the driver with one of our precious boxes. A number of ladies who resembled overblown roses were cl.u.s.tered on the staircase. One of them was Lady Essington-blond hair, swelling bosom, staring blue eyes. She put a hand on her companion's forearm, the other on the head of her little native servant. "Lord. It's the mad wife," she murmured and took in every inch of me-creased skirts, badly dressed hair, scorched cheeks. They all watched in amazement as the heap of boxes grew.

I ordered the footman to take the boxes to my bedchamber and told Annie to ensure they were safely stowed away. When I faced Lady Essington again, I noticed that one of her eyelids had lowered slightly and a little of the radiance was gone from her cheeks. "We were about to join your husband for a hand of cards," she said. I took her offered arm and sailed into the card room, which had already gone quiet in antic.i.p.ation of my arrival.

Aislabie was draped across a small chair, all the generous expanse of him sprawled in an inverted arc of blue and primrose. He clasped a fistful of cards, and there was a gla.s.s of wine at his elbow and coins on the table. A grin spread from one side of his mouth but stopped at his eyes.

I had time to note that he wore a trim new wig with curls gathered at the nape before he unfurled himself and sprang across the room. "Well, dearest Em, here's a thing," he said, then kissed my hand and cheek. "My wife, ladies and gentlemen, a refugee, I don't doubt, from the building site that is our estate just at present."

He held tight to my hand, instructed a servant to bring me wine, asked if I'd eaten. "Then we must find you some supper," he said, and bowed us out of the room and up the stairs. People gathered for a better view, and there was a frantic waving of fans, high-pitched laughter, a fuzz of horsehair, satins, raised eyebrows.

I looked on this crowd with the detachment I used to feel for mice in the laboratory, although Aislabie squeezed my burned hand so tightly that he hurt me. He placed me in the middle of a dainty sofa, offered to send up a plate of cold chicken, and abandoned me to the company of Lady Essington, who peppered me with question and comment: How long was I staying? Wasn't I brave to travel alone? Was I still working away at my wonderful experiments with . . . what was it? But she'd heard there'd been an accident at Selden recently-did I know anything about that? And did I know that I had started quite a trend with my natural philosophy, which was now all the rage? She herself had recently been to a lecture given by John Desaguliers, a close friend of the late Sir Isaac Newton, all about mechanics and mathematics. Push and pull, that was the essence.

I answered in monosyllables and smiled across at her little servant, who watched me throughout with huge, l.u.s.trous eyes. "What's your name?" I asked when his mistress was silent at last.

"He answers to Samuel," she said.

"And where were you born, Samuel?"

"He doesn't know. He was a gift from my husband." She rubbed her fingernails through his curls. "Such a sweet, good boy, eh, Sam?" She took his little hand in her white fingers and led him away.

The night wore on, and the more I sipped champagne, the more amazed I became that I had ever tried to belong here. When I went downstairs again, I found Aislabie up to his old tricks: smoking with a special crony, keeping him apart by leaning his elbow against the wall, and thereby coc.o.o.ning them from the rest to exchange schemes and secrets.

He pulled me to his side. "Here she is, my little alchemist. We've been talking about you, Em-or rather that dear friend of yours, Thomas Shales." The name cracked about my head like a pistol shot. Aislabie's arm was on my back, and his hand kneaded my shoulder.

"Ah, you know the tragic Reverend Shales, Mrs. Aislabie?" said his smooth-faced, smooth-voiced companion.

"Tragic."

"Is what his friends call him. Your husband might have another adjective."

My husband caressed the side of my neck. "Poor Em. There's not much choice of companion in the country. But the Reverend Shales strikes me as a little too high-minded even for you, my love. A whole barrage of articles by him has. .h.i.t the press about the evils of absentee landlords, how the current system of parish support is failing, rents are too high, and on and on . . ." His fingers strayed across my collarbone. "Good Lord, doesn't the man understand the meaning of the words moderation or progress? The Selden air obviously ain't doing him any good; turned him sour, in fact."

"He was formerly rector at Twickenham, so he's not always been so far from the center of things," said the other man, whose gaze was following the path of my husband's fingers as they caressed the dip between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Ah, Twickenham. The height of fashion, in fact. But despite his vast experience with dandelions and crab apples, and an excellent reputation among his cohorts at the Royal Society for measuring airs, the man will have to leave our parish. Can't have people thinking he's voicing my opinions. How would that be for business?" said my husband. Our companion flung back his head and showed his yellow teeth. "So next time you see him, Em, a word in his ear. Tell him to keep quiet, at least until he's found another living."

I was given a little push, which sent me reeling onto the stairs, but I stood my ground and refused to go to bed, though my body was humming with fatigue and my mind too full to allow sensible conversation. At one point, I stumbled down to the bas.e.m.e.nt in case Annie was there, but I was told she'd been sent to bed, her being no use whatever to anyone. The maids were white-faced and limp, and the sulky parrot had lost shine from its green feathers and wouldn't fix me with its cloudy eye.

Upstairs, people were leaving, but Lady Essington hung back while my husband held her hand a very long time, kissed it pa.s.sionately, turned it over, kissed her wrist, leaned forward, and whispered something in her ear. She wished him a safe voyage, and it dawned on me that this must be a farewell party, because she was pleading with him to take care and telling him that she would be waiting for him. She let her blue eyes dwell fondly on his bent head and then turned her gaze on me, not bothering to veil her look of possession and resentment. Then she stooped down for Samuel to fasten her cloak, patted him on the head, waited until he had swept up her train, and sailed out to her carriage.

As soon as she'd gone, the effects of alcohol, kept at bay by her fragrant presence, took Aislabie from the inside, thickened his lips, drained the warmth from his eyes, and made him lurch on the stairs. I followed and spoke his name, but he didn't reply, only climbed on and on until he came to the door of the crimson bedchamber and shut it in my face.

Below me, the servants gathered gla.s.ses and blew out candles. I sensed that they were hoping to witness an argument, but I took a candlestick and opened the door of my own chamber. It was not, as I'd antic.i.p.ated, all bundled up in dust sheets; rather, it was fresh-smelling, with roses in a little gla.s.s on the table. The Selden boxes were piled in a corner unopened-hardly surprising, as Gill had nailed down the wooden lids with considerable vehemence. I hadn't the heart to summon an exhausted maid to unlace my gown, so I removed my hoop, averted my eyes from the hearth where I had knelt with a lapful of dead babies, and lay down on the bed, not between the sheets, because of what had probably been planned to take place between them.

I listened to the house and wished that I could turn back the clock and hear Sarah on the backstairs, even if it was in the course of an a.s.signation with my husband. Then I relived my precious conversation with Shales in the church, every word, every gesture, and wondered for the hundredth time what would have happened if Annie had not come. The noises of London filled my head, and the house swam through the teeming night toward morning and heaven knew what developments.

[ 5 ].

THE NEXT DAY the skin around Annie's eyes was greenish with exhaustion. She said she hadn't slept much because of the din in the streets outside, though her face was animated with excitement at the prospect of the day ahead. Of course, she was not sufficiently hardened to the ways of the fashionable world to wrench properly at the laces of my stays, so I had to call in a London maid.

"Could you tell me what time my husband will be up?" I asked.

"Oh, ma'am, he went out at eight."

"And where is he likely to be?"

"I couldn't say."

I slid her a sixpence, and her lips pursed with self-importance. "At his ship perhaps, or in a coffeehouse?" I asked.

"Either of those. Anywhere. He takes an interest in all sorts, I'm told. Down toward the Strand, I think he often goes."

"And where is the ship moored?"

"Lord knows. Wapping, probably."

Another sixpence. "Do you remember a maid called Sarah Holborne who worked here last year? Have you seen her recently?"

"Not recently. Not since last month, when she called a few times, but the master wasn't home to her." A knowing smirk. Presumably the whole household-except for me, of course-had known the exact nature of Sarah's relationship with my husband.

AN HOUR LATER, Annie and I set forth into the filthy morning to find a trader who would give me a fair price for my possessions. We took the parrot bowl and my father's spygla.s.s as samples. Annie wore her stable-yard pattens, and I carried an ancient umbrella found in the stand by the front door, a tattered silk affair that knocked against her uncomplaining head as we walked.

Though I had been away barely three months, London had swollen, and the streets near Hanover Square were full of scaffolding and loudmouthed laborers. We went east to Soho in search of the kind of dealer who might appreciate the perfection of the parrot bowl. Each time I unwrapped it I felt a pang for the b.u.t.tery glaze and the bird's gold-dusted feathers. The London buyers were astute enough to note my desperation, because the most I could raise was eight guineas. Meanwhile, Annie dragged her feet at every shop window, goggling at the displays of locks, laces, porcelain, silverware, candles, and silks. But it was the bookstalls that slowed her down the most. She ran her fingers over the spines, picked up a volume as if it were a fragile piece of gla.s.s, and stooped to sniff the pages. "Could you read every one of these?"

"Unless they were in German or Hebrew or some other language I don't understand." She replaced the book reverently but would have stayed there for hours searching the pages for a key to their secrets, so in the end I said, "We'll start reading lessons tonight," and that made her move all right. She hitched up her skirts and clung to me like a bloodhound.

We were by now near St. Paul's, and the air was thick with a fog of smoke combined with the wet of a most unseasonable August. Filth clogged the streets, and the press of carriages, carts, and chairs thrust us against more humanity in a hundred yards than had crowded into Selden Wick during the entire run of the fair. But perhaps the map of the city had been engraved on my mind on the day of the dead babies, because I was the expert leading Annie into the labyrinth, and she was full of wonder at my a.s.surance. We found an instrument maker, a Monsieur Cheret, whose French name endeared him to me and who handled my father's spygla.s.s with great reverence and said he would take anything else of similar quality.

Next we returned to the Strand, where coffeehouses had opened up in every alley and street corner. We hovered outside each in turn until a gentleman on his way in or out happened to catch my eye, when I would ask him to go and shout for Aislabie. Each time the door opened, I smelled tobacco, spirits, and burned coffee beans. Each time, after it had shut in our faces, we stood for several minutes waiting for the gentleman to come back or my husband to appear. Usually no one came, but one or two put their heads round the door to give me a leer or a shake of the head. Only at Jonathan's did a man walk past me almost without pause but held the door open while he called, "Aislabie," as if he expected a response. I saw long trestles, male heads bent together in conversation, male hands holding up newspapers, smoke winding from their pipes, coffee cups pushed aside. "Aislabie," he shouted again. One or two of the patrons looked up and then across at me, but there was no sign of my husband.

[ 6 ].

AFTER SUPPER, ANNIE reappeared in a clean ap.r.o.n. "I've come for my reading lesson," she said.

I had no idea how to begin. Until that moment, the transference of knowledge from my head to hers had seemed a straightforward matter; but now I didn't even know whether to start with letters or words. Nevertheless, I lit a candle, and we sat on either side of The Castle of Knowledge, one of the few volumes in the house. "First I'll tell you what the book is about, so that the words you read will not be too unexpected or mysterious. The Castle of Knowledge concerns an old argument, which until recently was so hotly debated that it lost people their lives-whether the sun or the earth is at the center of the universe. Hence the subt.i.tle: A Reader on the Progress of the Heliocentric Argument."

We then began to spell out word after word, but it was a tortuous process, what with her drooping lip and labored breathing. When I learned to read, I seemed to remember, I made rapid leaps between letters and words so that books were revealed to me all of a sudden, complete and lucid. Annie staggered over each new letter, and even when she spelled out the words they made no immediate sense to her. I had to remind myself that she, despite being the legitimate daughter of a respectable family, had received none of my early privileged education. Besides, I owed her a great deal, and I remembered that when my father taught me something that I failed at first to understand, he would try again using a different method or example. Even so, by the end of half an hour I was on the brink of losing patience, so I set her to work out the phrase as the world turned and copy it onto a slate.

At which point, in came my husband. Annie reverted to her customary limpness and my hands went chilly, but he seemed in a good mood as he sauntered over and picked up her work. He winked at her and shot me an amused glance from under his wig. "Highly commendable, Em, but is it wise? Words equal aspirations, as you well know." He jerked his head toward the door and watched Annie scuttle away, then flung himself down on her little chair, extended his legs, and pulled at the ruffles on his shirtsleeves. "Well, you have become quite a gadabout, dear Em. You'd best explain yourself."

"I have been showing Annie the city."

"So I gather. I heard you had been asking for me at Jonathan's. Can't have that. Makes me look a fool."

"I needed to speak with you urgently and you disappeared this morning. I have no money."

"Lord, I'm amazed you came all the way to London, if that's the case. Nowhere gobbles up money like London."

I took heart from the fact that he obviously hated me to be there. "Your friends seem to think I am mad anyway."

"They do. You are. I gather that since I was at Selden, you tried to blow yourself to kingdom come."

"An experiment. And I think I was justified in being reckless, since I had just discovered that my maid was pregnant by my husband, who had subsequently abandoned her. I don't want money for myself so much as for her and for the tenants who are starving."

"I've no money to spare. None. So if I were you, I'd go home this minute." He took his watch from his pocket and stood up. "I'll give you a couple of crowns. Should get you home. And this time stay there."

But sometime during the past few weeks, possibly in the explosion or while reading my father's notebooks, I had found some courage. I sprang to my feet, got between him and the door, and leaned against it.

He sighed and folded his arms. Up close, he seemed ma.s.sy and immovable, and I could see the stubble on his chin and the slight coa.r.s.ening of his complexion. "I've told you. I haven't a bean. That's why I'm off on Flora. It will save a fortune to be on board her-escape the bailiffs for a bit. You could come with me, but I'm afraid I've discovered that the crew might kick up. Some think it's bad luck to have a woman on board, and there are hazards enough without that. We're all reliant on old Flora sailing home weighed down with gold and rum and mahogany. Real gold, just think. Then we'll be laughing."

"What will she carry on the voyage out?"

I had touched on his current dearest love, and for a moment his eyes sparked. "This and that. Gunpowder and weapons mostly. There's a great hunger for modern guns out there."

"And where do you sail to?"

"Calabar, in Africa, as I've said, then on to southern America."

"Where I presume you will sell the slaves you bought in Calabar."

"Exactly so."

"And how long will this take?"

"Eight months to a year. Depends on the winds. But I shall need your help, Em, if we're going to make a go of it. You'll have to behave like a proper lady while I'm gone, so that when I come back I can make a name for myself."

"If behaving like a proper lady means I may behave like you, a proper gentleman, I have a great deal of freedom."

"You've been in the country too long, Emilie. That's not how a wife should speak to her husband."

"This wife will speak any way she chooses."

He bowed and put his hand on the doork.n.o.b. When I didn't move, he gave a snort of laughter and took hold of my shoulder to edge me out of the way. "Truth is, I want to be left alone, Em. Happy to have you down at Selden but can't abide you being here. I have to be free to make a life without you-even considered a divorce, but it's so d.a.m.n hard to get the knot untied. I'm hoping you'll oblige with madness or adultery sooner or later. The world won't take much convincing if you carry on like you did last night, turning up off the streets like a beggar. See, Emilie, the world is shrinking. You think the lens of a microscope shows you everything, but you're wrong. Speculation is more lucrative than fact. People imagine better roads, faster printing presses, cheaper textiles-they imagine them, and the next thing is, they exist. Bit like your late lamented pa, who thought he could make gold from a lump of old metal, only my method is obviously more foolproof."

"If you tell me where Sarah is and give me some money and an undertaking that you won't pull down the cottages at Lower Selden, I'll go back to the country and leave you in peace."

"You can rest easy on the last point. No chance in the near future of building new cottages to replace the old. If you want money, you'll have to wait for Flora, like the rest of us. As for Sarah, haven't the least idea. You'll leave tomorrow, Emilie."