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coward.”
    Miranda almost laughed. “How can you be so silly? I would never have believed so ridiculous a threat. I didn’t know much in those days, but I did know that you would stand by me no matter what happened. It was not your cowardice that ruined my life. It was my own vanity. Do you remember, Aunt Letty, what they used to call me?”
    â€œOf course. The Magnificent Miranda.”
    â€œYes, and I was stupid enough to believe them. What a silly young idiot I was. So pleased with myself. So foolishly arrogant. I’d caught the uncatchable Rodney Velacott, and I felt superior to every other girl I knew.” She shook her head in bitter amazement at the memory of her younger self. “The Greeks had a word for it, you know. Pride. Hubris. The gods must have had a merry laugh at my expense as they took me down. I suppose I should be thankful they didn’t make me blind, like poor King Oedipus.”
    â€œYou may have been arrogant and foolish,” her aunt said as they went up the stairs to collect her things, “but your crime was not so great as to deserve what followed. Why, you had not a single year of happiness with that man.”
    â€œNo, but I had you to turn to.” Miranda threw a tremulous smile at the older woman with heartfelt gratitude. “I thank the Lord for that.”
    Letty’s belongings were already packed. Miranda’s abigail and the one remaining housemaid had done the packing this morning, their last household chore before leaving to find other employment. (Miranda had written to Belle and Charles to ask if the maids and Higgins, the groom, could be retained on their household staff: They have been employed here for years , she’d written, and not only are they familiar with the requirements of the house, they are very loyal, honest and deserving employees . But Belle had written back that she would rather choose her own staff.) Higgins, the last remaining servant in Miranda’s employ, would be leaving, too, after he conveyed Letty to her cousin in Surrey and brought back the carriage.
    Higgins carried down Letty’s things just as the draymen were bringing in the new owners’ baggage. The entryway, the passageways and the stairs were scenes of complete confusion. Miranda and Letty could hardly manage a coherent goodbye. To postpone the parting as long as possible, Miranda went out with her aunt to the carriage. There they stood clinging together until Higgins coughed to remind them that the horses should not stand in the cold too long. But even he was tearful at this leave-taking.
    Miranda stood there on the windy drive long after Letty’s carriage disappeared into the dusk. Then she went in and, ignoring the draymen and the boxes and the disarray of her once-quiet domicile, climbed slowly up to her room, threw herself down on her bed and wept unconsolably. It isn’t fair , she cried in childish self-pity. It just isn’t fair!
    She knew it was self-pity, but this once she was going to wallow in it. Life had been hellish for the past eleven years, and indeed it wasn’t fair that her future held no prospects for improvement. How ironic life could be, she thought. She’d started out with such high hopes. She’d won the envy of all her friends when she’d married Rodney, who’d been so handsome, so very well-to-pass, and so determined a bachelor. Winning him had been a triumph for a young woman with no title and very modest means. But her feelings of triumph were short-lived. Within a month of her romantic honeymoon in Italy, after she’d moved into this very house glowing with happiness, she discovered that her new husband had a strong tendency toward drunkenness and lechery.
    She’d not wept in those days. Her pride hadn’t allowed it. She’d tried other kinds of cajolery: anger, sympathy, warmth, coldness, giving and withholding. But she’d not tried tears. Not at first. But when nothing