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on it. Now may I read to you, daughter?”
    “Aye, if I may know, in this one final appeal to your just nature, if there exists the possibility that Dr. Bosworthy may put your mind to ease about the goings-on in this parish by confirming the general occurrence of such unseemly behaviour in every parish the world over.”
    “I would be receptive to hearing such a theory at least.”
    “And if the supposition be true, you may again find reason to uplift our neighbours in your esteem?”
    Henry Peppercorn shook his head in sadness.“No, dear Anna; I predict the opposite outcome in such a case: by learning that such a tendency to depravity and moral reprehensibility exists within us all, I shall find myself ever the more dejected.”
    “Then I shall wish that Payton Parish constitute the exception, rather than the rule in this regard.”
    “And I shall wish the same.”
    “And some day, you will be released by your informer to tell me all that you have learnt?”
    Mr. Peppercorn nodded. “If you do not find it out for yourself through your own ingenuity and observation. For, daughter, this much now seems clear: the curtain which veils the shame of this parish is day by day, thread by thread, being unraveled by those who tug and teaze and abrade against it. I dare say there are sections even now so frayed as to afford those who seek it a most enlightening, albeit stark, glimpse through the sheer.”
    “Oh, dear,” said Anna.
    A gloomy nod from Anna’s father in response.
    And a shiver of chill from them both.
    For, in addition, unattended, the fire had gone out.

Chapter Three
     
    It was a very long walk to Turnington Lodge. Mr. Peppercorn would not hear of his daughter striking out “on shank’s mare” without accompaniment. But Anna was accustomed to solitary rambles. She enjoyed her frequent uncompanioned turns upon her father’s many-acred estate, and would often take herself by the road into the village of Berryknell, upon the stated pretext of purchasing a spool of thread or upon the unstated pretext of catching a glimpse of a certain clerk in a certain solicitor’s office. Anna relished the opportunity, as well, to sort out her crowded thoughts as she went along. As she climbed the downs, she sometimes fancied herself scaling the Alps with a staff and a mountain she-goat—the staff for negotiating the rocks and crags, the goat for the provision of milk to sustain her in her journey. Such a trip if undertaken in reality, Anna believed, would clear her head with great success; she would return to Feral Park restored and renewed.
    As for the walk to Turnington Lodge, a compromise was reached between father and daughter: Anna would make the trip on foot over the downs, whilst her father’s man James followed a respectful number of paces behind. He would proceed quietly and without so much as a nod of acknowledgement to Anna’s presence. Should she happen to turn and glance behind her, he had been instructed by his employer to feign interest in something off to the side, or kneel at that instant to re-lace his boot. It should be plausible to anyone witnessing the trip that Anna’s father’s coachman and man-servant was only by coincidence peregrinating in the same direction as was Anna.
    Whilst she was unhappy to have her independence compromised in this manner, Anna, in fact, found herself at one point along the way not unhappy at all, and even a bit comforted by James’ close proximity. It was in passing Canary Stream at the outskirts of Tatter Wood that she felt the sense of relief that came from knowing that James was near by. Within the wood lived a community of gipsies whose number proliferated by the week. “It is a veritable gipsy metropolis within that wood!” Gemma had remarked in amazement only the previous day. “And no doubt it is a metropolis with all manner of services: gipsy bank, gipsy post office, gipsy apothecary!” Anna at first had found more than a draught of wit in Gemma’s