"Mr Woodhope likes you, Cassandra, I think," said Mrs Field.
"Does he?"
Miss Tobias (who was also in the room) said, "Miss Parbringer is wise and keeps her opinion of Mr Woodhope to herself."
"Oh," cried Cassandra, "you may know it if you wish. Mr Woodhope is Mr Field stretched out a little to become more thin and tall. He is younger and therefore more disposed to be agreeable and his wits are rather sharper. But when all is said and done he is only Mr Field come again."
"Why then do you give him encouragement?" asked Mrs Field.
"Because I suppose that I must marry someone and Mr Woodhope has this to recommend him – that he lives in Grace Adieu and that in marrying him I need never be parted from my dear Mrs Field."
"It is a very poor ambition to wish to marry a Mr Field of any sort," sighed Mrs Field. "Have you nothing better to wish for?"
Cassandra considered. "I have always had a great desire to visit Yorkshire," she said. "I imagine it to be just like the novels of Mrs Radcliffe."
"It is exactly like everywhere else," said Miss Tobias.
"Oh, Miss Tobias," said Cassandra, "how can you say so? If magic does not linger in Yorkshire, where may we find it still? 'Upon the moors, beneath the stars, With the King's wild Company.' That is my idea of Yorkshire."
"But," said Miss Tobias, "a great deal of time has passed since the King's wild Company was last there and in the meantime Yorkshiremen have acquired tollgates and newspapers and stagecoaches and circulating libraries and everything most modern and commonplace."
Cassandra sniffed. "You disappoint me," she said.
Miss Tobias was governess to two little girls at a great house in the village, called Winter's Realm. The parents of these children were dead and the people of Grace Adieu were fond of telling each other that it was no house for children, being too vast and gloomy and full of odd-shaped rooms and strange carvings. The younger child was indeed often fearful and often plagued with nightmares. She seemed, poor little thing, to believe herself haunted by owls. There was nothing in the world she feared so much as owls. No one else had ever seen the owls, but the house was old and full of cracks and holes to let them in and full of fat mice to tempt them so perhaps it were true. The governess was not much liked in the village: she was too tall, too fond of books, too grave, and – a curious thing – never smiled unless there was some thing to smile at. Yet Miss Ursula and Miss Flora were very prettily behaved children and seemed greatly attached to Miss Tobias.
Despite their future greatness as heiresses, in the article of relations the children were as poor as churchmice. Their only guardian was a cousin of their dead mother. In all the long years of their orphanhood this gentleman had only visited them twice and once had written them a very short letter at Christmas. But, because Captain Winbright wore a redcoat and was an officer in the --shires, all his absences and silences were forgiven and Miss Ursula and Miss Flora (though only eight and four years old) had begun to shew all the weakness of their sex by preferring him to all the rest of their acquaintance.
It was said that the great-grandfather of these children had studied magic and had left behind him a library. Miss Tobias was often in the library and what she did there no one knew. Of late her two friends, Mrs Field and Miss Parbringer, had also been at the house a great deal. But it was generally supposed that they were visiting the children. For ladies (as every one knows) do not study magic. Magicians themselves are another matter – ladies (as every one knows) are wild to see magicians. (How else to explain the great popularity of Mr Norrell in all the fashionable drawing rooms of London? Mr Norrell is almost as famous for his insignificant face and long silences as he is for his incomparable magicianship and Mr Norrell's pupil, Mr Strange, with his almost handsome face and lively conversation is welcome where ever he goes.) This then, we will suppose, must explain a question which Cassandra Parbringer put to Miss Tobias on a day in September, a very fine day on the cusp of summer and autumn.
"And have you read Mr Strange's piece in The Review? What is your opinion of it?"
"I thought Mr Strange expressed himself with his customary clarity. Any one, whether or not they understand any thing of the theory and practice of magic, might understand him. He was witty and sly, as he generally is. It was altogether an admirable piece of writing. He is a clever man, I think."
"You speak exactly like a governess."
"Is that so surprizing?"
"But I did not wish to hear your opinion as a governess, I wished to hear your opinion as a… never mind. What did you think of the ideas?"
"I did not agree with any of them."
"Ah, that was what I wished to hear."
"Modern magicians," said Mrs Field, "seem to devote more of their energies to belittling magic than to doing any. We are constantly hearing how certain sorts of magic are too perilous for men to attempt (although they appear in all the old stories). Or they cannot be attempted any more because the prescription is lost. Or it never existed. And, as for the Otherlanders, Mr Norrell and Mr Strange do not seem to know if there are such persons in the world. Nor do they appear to care very much, for, even if they do exist, then it seems we have no business talking to them. And the Raven King, we learn, was only a dream of fevered medieval brains, addled with too much magic."
"Mr Strange and Mr Norrell mean to make magic as commonplace as their own dull persons," said Cassandra. "They deny the King for fear that comparison with his great magic would reveal the poverty of their own."
Mrs Field laughed. "Cassandra," she said, "does not know how to leave off abusing Mr Strange."
Then, from the particular sins of the great Mr Strange and the even greater Mr Norrell, they were led to talk of the viciousness of men in general and from there, by a natural progression, to a discussion of whether Cassandra should marry Mr Woodhope.
While the ladies of Grace Adieu were talking, Mr Jonathan Strange (the magician and second phenomenon of the Age) was seated in the library of Mr Gilbert Norrell (the magician and first phenomenon of the Age). Mr Strange was informing Mr Norrell that he intended to be absent from London for some weeks. "I hope, sir, that it will cause you no inconvenience. The next article for the Edinburgh Magazine is done – unless, sir, you wish to make changes (which I think you may very well do without my assistance)."
Mr Norrell inquired with a frown where Mr Strange was going, for, as was well known in London, the elder magician – a quiet, dry little man – did not like to be without the younger for even so much as a day, or half a day. He did not even like to spare Mr Strange to speak to other people.
"I am going to Gloucestershire, sir. I have promised Mrs Strange that I will take her to visit her brother, who is Rector of a village there. You have heard me speak of Mr Henry Woodhope, I think?"
The next day was rainy in Grace Adieu and Miss Tobias was unable to leave Winter's Realm. She passed the day with the children, teaching them Latin ("which I see no occasion to omit simply on account of your sex. One day you may have a use for it,") and in telling them stories of Thomas of Dundale's captivity in the Other Lands and how he became the first human servant of the Raven King.
When the second day was fine and dry, Miss Tobias took the opportunity to slip away for half an hour to visit Mrs Field, leaving the children in the care of the nursery maid. It so happened that Mr Field had gone to Cheltenham (a rare occurrence, for, as Mrs Field remarked, there never was a man so addicted to home. "I fear we make it far too comfortable for him," she said) and so Miss Tobias took advantage of his absence to make a visit of a rather longer duration than usual. (At the time there seemed no harm in it.)