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being; and the features beneath the lace and ribbons of her nightcap had still an arresting perfection in their form, though the enchanting eyes which had once enslaved the wealthy Mr Manners were faded and weak; the lips thinner, less red.
    ‘Now, my dear,’ she said in a voice blurred by oncoming sleep, ‘you and I shall have a comfortable chat.’
    ‘Oh!’ Dido was tormented by the sound of the dance still seeping through the uneven floorboards.
    But there was no escaping the chat and, unfortunately, at such moments Mrs Manners found no subject more comfortable than the offences of all her relations who were, by her account, intent upon ‘getting money off me. Between my kin and poor Mr Manners’ own family, I am worried to death!’
    ‘Yes, Aunt,’ murmured Dido, miserable with boredom and an obscure kind of guilt. It was a common refrain. She could have supplied every word of it herself and she well knew that she was expected to contribute nothing to the conversation. ‘Yes, Aunt, very true’ was all that was required.
    Mrs Manners’ lids flickered sleepily, peeling up oddly and revealing rather more white of the eye than is usual. But she continued to struggle against the narcotic.
    ‘But I am too clever for them all,’ she gloated sleepily. ‘They shall not get the better of me. They shall see!’
    ‘Yes, Aunt, I am sure they shall.’
    ‘My brother George is the worst of them all. And he thinks he has got the better of me.’
    Dido began upon another anodyne reply, but as she spoke she noticed that her aunt’s sleepy eyes had come to rest upon her own hand – where there was a ring missing; the great ruby from the middle finger was gone, leaving in its place a deep white groove to testify to the many years it had been worn.
    ‘Aunt, where is your ring?’
    ‘It is nothing. Do not say anything about it.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘It is nothing.’ The little white hand fluttered briefly in a regal gesture of dismissal. ‘George may have it if he wishes. He thinks he has got the better of me…’ She gazed up at the tester for a moment, nodded very wisely in its direction. ‘I do not care about it, however. I have not come here to oblige him. ’ She shook her head wisely. But the brown medicine had won at last. Her lids flickered and closed. A moment later her lower lip dropped slightly and a thin snore rattled out.
    Dido breathed a sigh of great relief, but found that the hold upon her wrist was not relaxed. Through the old, uneven floorboards came the tormenting sound of the dance; the candle burnt still beside the writing desk, but even her letter was beyond her reach while that hand confined her wrist. There was nothing to be done but to settle herself as comfortably as she might upon the narrow bedside chair and wait to be released.
    She gazed down for a moment or two at the delicate finger with its telltale groove. The missing ring was of considerable value. Why should Mrs Manners give such a generous gift to a brother she did not seem to like?
    It was another intriguing puzzle.
    But, despite her efforts, Dido found that she was too tired and dispirited to dwell for long upon intriguing puzzles. Thoughts of her own wretched situation were rising up to engulf her weary brain …

Chapter Four
    The cause of Dido’s punishment and present exile from the home of her brother and sister-in-law at Badleigh Vicarage was a certain Doctor Jeremiah Prowdlee. It was on Doctor Jeremiah Prowdlee’s account that she was fixed here at her aunt’s side, doomed to an indefinite sentence of measuring out medicine and listening to a litany of complaints.
    Doctor Prowdlee was the new rector of Upper Marwell – a parish adjoining Badleigh. He was a large man with a high, white, shining dome of a head which did not seem to have lost its hair so much as allowed it to slip down about the face, where it clung on tenaciously. He had a puritanical turn of mind, a pompous air – and a family of children which filled a