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By Root 490 0

He was beginning to regard her in a way quite different from the uninterested condescension which had possessed him before. She read in that one glance that she had become not only an adversary, but a woman. The passage in the diary came back to her as sharply as if it were on the tablecloth in front of her—What manhood he has!—and she felt her face flame. The thought was so profoundly repellent her hands shook, her fork clattering on the plate. Perhaps Sybilla had made other references, obliquely—even in detail! Her face was burning; she felt as if her dress had come undone in front of everyone, especially Eustace. He might even know what she had read, and more. He might in his own mind be repeating the words, and sharing them with her, imagining her response. She shuddered. Then, because civility demanded it, she looked up—and found Jack Radley, seated beside Emily, regarding her with concern.

“Have you discovered something?” Tassie added with distressing perspicacity.

“No!” Charlotte denied too quickly. “I don’t know who it was—I don’t know at all!”

“Then you’re a fool,” Mrs. March said viciously. “Or a liar. Or both.”

“Then we are all fools or liars.” William laid his napkin beside his untouched plate. Where others had pushed the food around and eaten a mouthful or two, he had not even pretended.

“We are not all fools.” Eustace did not look at Charlotte, but she knew as well as if he had that he was speaking to her. “Doubtless one of us knows who killed George and Sybilla, but the rest of us have sufficient wisdom not to speculate aloud on every thought that comes into our minds. It can only cause unnecessary grief. We must remember Christian charity as well as righteous indignation.”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” Vespasia demanded with startling anger. “Christian charity towards whom? And why? You never had an ounce of charity in you all your life. Why the sudden about-face? Are you on the other end, for once?”

Eustace looked as if he had been struck. He fumbled for a reply but found nothing that shielded him from her brilliant suspicion.

Not because she cared a lot about Eustace, but because she must defend William from the humiliation—above all, from Eustace himself—Charlotte interrupted with the first thing that came into her head.

“We all have things to hide,” she said overly loud. “Foolishness, if not guilt. I have seen enough investigations to know that. Perhaps Mr. March is just beginning to learn. I’m sure he would wish to protect his family, whether he is concerned for the rest of us or not. He may believe Emily will not retaliate, no matter what is said of her, but I don’t think he misjudges me in the same way.”

Vespasia was silent. If she thought anything more she preferred not to say it now.

William looked at her with the shadow of a smile, so thin it was painful, and Jack Radley put his hand on Emily’s arm.

“Indeed?” Mrs. March regarded Charlotte with a curl of her lip. “And what on earth could you say that my son would care about in the slightest?”

Charlotte forced a smile to her face. “You are inviting me to do precisely what we have just agreed would be most unfortunate—cause unnecessary distress by speculation. Is that not so, Mr. March?” She lifted her eyes and met Eustace’s.

He was surprised, and a series of thoughts flashed through his mind so vividly she could trace them as if they had been pictures: alarm, temporary safety, a budding irony—a perception new to him—and finally, a reluctant admiration.

She had a hideous feeling that at that precise moment, had she wished, she might have filled the place so lately left by Sybilla, but this time she stared him out, and it was he who lowered his eyes.

Still she slept badly. She had not offered Aunt Vespasia any explanation of her extraordinary confrontation with Eustace, and she felt guilty for it. Emily was still too absorbed in her own grief and the weight of fear that haunted her to have noticed.

It was long after midnight when she heard the noise outside, very slight, as of a pebble falling. Then it came again and