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In a secret letter to Austin, delivered by Vinnie, Mabel confessed ‘an immeasurable feeling of wrath’ when she thought of Ned, ‘the one person to whom it was all due in the first place’. As frustration grew, blame spread from Ned to his mother and sister, whom Austin and Mabel called privately ‘the Powers’. Their enemy was plural, with Susan cast as the ‘leading Power’, fortified by Ned and Mattie.

Ned and Mattie were drawn into the struggle between their parents. They stood by their mother as their father withdrew his love. Austin made it a test of allegiance; as he saw it, Ned and Mattie failed to choose him. Gib, who was not expected to understand the issues, was exempt from this test. Turning from his elder two, Austin loved his youngest the more; he told himself that Gib alone cared for him.

While Ned’s revelation was still new, Austin justified his love in heaven-sent terms. Their love, he told Mabel, was a holy thing, a holy of holies they agreed. Mabel played back this script. Austin’s language is banal compared with his sister’s, but Mabel’s ready fervour built up this drama.

‘I trust you as I trust God,’ she told Austin in March 1883. This was a time of trial for all concerned. Whenever Mabel ventured out she found Sue and Mattie in her path, so watchful there was no evading their surveillance. Austin smuggled a message to Mabel: ‘I am famished for you.’ Anxious and impatient, Mabel felt a dual deprivation because she was losing the bond with Sue, whom Mabel admitted to Austin she still loved.

‘I do - she stimulates me intellectually more than any other woman I ever knew. She is fascinating to me. I would do any thing to make her like me again. She has such pretty feminine hands and wrists, and she had some very pretty little quaint bracelets last night. I could have kissed them at any moment.’

What fascinated Mabel above all was Susan’s friendship with the recluse. Mabel’s repeated insistence that the poet was her ‘friend’ has the sound of a rival claim. She was accustomed to have her way, and as her annoyance swelled rivalry displaced regard. This adversarial role of ‘the Powers’, with three members of the family campaigning against the godly pair, allowed Mabel to cast herself as victim. In fact, Susan was now in a weaker position as an unwanted wife than as a dependent girl thirty years before.

Back in the 1850s, Vinnie had joined forces with Emily in persuading Susan Gilbert to marry Austin. Now, Austin expected their assistance in deceiving Susan. What Emily thought of this remains to be seen. Vinnie, meanwhile, provided the necessary cover. She permitted Mabel’s love letters to be addressed to her and delivered through the sisters’ post office box (number 207), to which no one but themselves and their brother had access. Usually Austin collected the mail and delivered it to his sisters, but if Austin was away or unavailable Vinnie was responsible for finding the letters from Mabel and passing them on. Vinnie also undertook to pass on letters in the reverse direction, from Austin to Mabel. He uttered the same fervid love-calls as to Susan in the 1850s and Mabel played them back with unflagging eloquence.

Mabel befriended the go-between. To Vinnie, in need of company, the warmth of these overtures was irresistible. From Mabel’s point of view, friendship with Vinnie was vital. If Mrs Todd, as Vinnie’s particular friend, was often at the Homestead, and Austin continued to pay his brotherly calls, no one could object if these legitimate visits happened to coincide. So it was that on Valentine’s Day 1883 the lovers converged before the fire in the dining room (warmer than the parlour and used as a sitting room in winter). Possibly Mabel’s presence was observed because three days later, when Mabel appeared at The Evergreens, Susan’s ‘utter coldness (combined with unimpeachable courtesy)’ reasserted itself. The atmosphere was so icy that Mabel thought several times she would have to leave.

Austin now had to face Susan’s protest. She