His teacup rattled in the saucer as Miss Barchester began to speak. “Our fashions become more extreme, do you not think, Mr. Godolphin?”
“I… I…” bleated Dolph.
“Yes, it is bad enough when the ladies adopt styles of semi-nudity and wear their waistlines up around their armpits. Now,I have my waistline in the right place. I never follow fashion. Fashion followsme. ”
“Indeed,” said Dolph. “I fear London fashion cannot have had a chance to see you, Miss Barchester, for all the ladies adopt the high waistline.”
“Are you contradicting me by any chance, Mr. Godolphin?”
“No, no. I…”
“Good. Male fashions are every bit as ridiculous. Why do you think so many men aspire to be Beau Brummells when they do not possess either his air or figure?” Her pale eyes fastened again on Dolph's area of shirt.
“Blessed if I know,” said Dolph crossly.
“London fashions,” pursued Miss Barchester, “are distasteful to me.”
“Then, it's as well you ain't in London,” pointed out Dolph. He took a swig of tepid tea and eyed her over the rim of his cup.
“But I shall be. I am thinking of persuading Mama and Papa to take me for a few weeks. I aim to… how do the vulgar put it?…cut a dash. ”
Dolph looked at her curiously. Could she be funning? Or was her vanity so great that she really thought she could impress society?
But she was his best friend's fiancée. He forced himself to be gallant. “Well, by Jove, Miss Barchester, the ladies of London will be agog to see the fair charmer who has stolen the heart of such a hardened bachelor as Lord Arthur.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Barchester sweetly.
Dolph blinked in amazement. This engagement to one of the most eligible men in the country had quite gone to Miss Barchester's head. What on earth did Arthur see in the creature?
At that moment Lord Arthur strolled over to join them. “You are making me jealous, the pair of you,” he teased. “I saw you, rattling away there like old friends.”
Miss Barchester at his arrival on the scene became quiet and submissive. The wings of her brown hair shone softly in the candlelight, and the smooth drapery of her old-fashioned gown fell in straight lines from her waist to the floor like a medieval garment. She kept her eyes demurely lowered.
“By George!” thought Dolph, alarmed. “Arthur thinks he's got himself a meek, old-fashioned wife.”
At least Lord Arthur could be counted on not to ask his friend's opinion of Miss Barchester or discuss her in any way. And that was a mercy. For Dolph knew he would be hard put to it to think of anything good to say about her.
On the road home, he remembered the princess's rout and at the same time decided to do his uttermost to secure Lord Arthur an invitation. Anyone who saw the fairy-tale princess could never look with any complacency on such an antidote as Martha Barchester.
Mr. Palfrey told his butler, Anderson, to tell the boatmen to be ready to set off at dawn the next day. The search must go on.
Anderson bowed and then went off to confide in Mrs. Jessop, not for the first time, that they had been mistaken in Mr. Palfrey. He must have loved Miss Felicity very much the way he searched and searched for her poor body.
Once he had gone, Mr. Palfrey darted to the door of the library and turned the key in the lock. Lovingly, he spread the castle blueprints out on the table before him.
In her haste, Miss Chubb had forgotten to shut the door of the priest's hole properly. Some months after Felicity's “death,” Mr. Palfrey, in one of his feverish hunts for the jewels, had noticed the crack in the wall and had discovered the hiding place. And that is how he had found the plans. He had searched the priest's hole thoroughly and had found the high ledge and the clean square in the dust that showed that a large box had recently rested on it.
From there he had deduced Felicity must have had the jewels in hiding and had taken them with her. It stood to reason that she would not have dared run away without any money. So the Channing jewels must have gone to the bottom of the ocean and, at least they, unlike the bodies, could not have been carried out to sea.
That was the reason he had the sea under the part of the cliff where they had gone over, searched each day so thoroughly.
He rolled up the plans and decided there were really no more undiscovered hiding places outside the priest's hole and the hidden staircase.
He would go to sleep early so as to be ready to continue the search early in the morning.
As soon as a red stormy dawn lit the heaving gray sea, Mr. Palfrey was there in an open boat piloted by the yeoman who had shied a piece of turf at him, but who now respected this man who had proved his love for the lost girl. Mr. Palfrey had grappling irons and various contrivances for hooking down into the water. It was the lowest tide they had had for some months, and Mr. Palfrey saw with rising excitement that there was an almost uncovered stretch of sand at the base of the rock. “Over there!” he cried to the yeoman, Mr. Godfrey.
“Better be careful,” shouted Mr. Godfrey as the open boat scraped its keel on the sand. “Won't be much time.”
“The spade! The spade!” shrieked Mr. Palfrey excitedly to one of the other men. “No, no. Give it to me. I shall dig myself.”
“Look the way he do dig!” exclaimed Mr. Godfrey. “He'll cut any corpse in half, spearing down like that.”
They waited patiently, watching Mr. Palfrey's feverish efforts, half-amused, half-touched.
Then Mr. Palfrey felt his spade clink against something. He threw the spade aside, and, kneeling down on the watery strip of sand, began to scrape at it with his fingers.
With a triumphant cry, he held up a necklace. The fierce red sun shone on it and it burned with all the fire of priceless rubies.
Mr. Palfrey gave a hysterical laugh. “The Channing jewels!” he shouted. “I have found them. Oh, God, at last. After all these weary days of searching.”
The men in the boat watched him, stricken. “You mean,” said Mr. Godfrey at last, “that that's what you was looking for all along? You didn't give a rap for Miss Felicity.”
But Mr. Palfrey, ecstatic with delight, turned the flashing stones this way and that.
Then a cloud covered the red sun. It took all the light out of the day. It took all the fire from the sea.
And the necklace in Mr. Palfrey's hand turned into cheap glass, as if the Cornish pixies had played some hellish trick on him.
He had betrayed himself. The men in the boat looked at him with eyes of stone.
Mr. Godfrey seized the oars and shoved off.
“You can't leave me,” shouted Mr. Palfrey. “The tide has turned.”
“Then, swim, you liddle ferret,” shouted back Mr. Godfrey.
Mr. Palfrey stood there until the boat had disappeared round the point. Then, shivering and whimpering and cursing Felicity under his breath, he began to swim.
It was as well he remembered the secret staircase-for the castle was under siege by angry locals at the front. It would be a long time before he dared poke his nose out of doors again.
On the eighth of April, Mr. Godolphin had a very odd audience with Princess Felicity of Brasnia. For he did not see her.