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Caroline.
    “Her niece, Miss Gambier—”
    A Fashionable miss in her late twenties, I should judge, and approaching the years of Danger. Tho’ fair-haired and blue-eyed, she was possessed of a something forbidding in her countenance.
    “—and her nephew, Mr. Edward Gambier.”
    The gentleman was just enough James-Edward’s senior, to figure as a possible hero: his curling locks guinea-gold, and his address assured.
    “Gambier!” my mother cried. “But surely you must be connexions of our dear Admiral?”
    “I am his wife,” Lady Gambier replied.
    Admiral Gambier is known far beyond the Service, for he is called upon, from time to time, to intercede on such delicate matters as the Government has in train. Even now he is absent from England about the business of the American War—in parley at Ghent over the cessation of hostilities between the Crown and that upstart nation. But we have nearer reasons to regard him: my brother Frank has twice served under the Admiral’s flag, and Gambier’s favour has advanced Frank’s career. Indeed, all the Gambiers must be of consuming interest to our party, for Lady Gambier was born a Mathew—first cousin to poor Anne, James’s late lamented wife.
    Beside me, James’s second wife was all alertness, quivering like a tightly-strung bow.
    “I have two sons, both Post Captains, in the Royal Navy,” my mother said warmly, “and the elder has excellent cause to be grateful to the Admiral.”
    “So kind,” Lady Gambier murmured indifferently.
    Mrs. Chute had turned already to a handsome gentleman of perhaps thirty, whose dress and looks proclaimed him a prosperous man of Town. A gentleman of independent fortune—perhaps a political crony of William Chute’s, I thought; and was thus surprized to learn that “Mr. L’Anglois is my husband’s confidential secretary.”
    Eliza pronounced the name
Langles
, but I guessed it was properly
Langwah
, in the French stile—which explained the man’s air of elegance. The French carry refinement in their veins.
    “Mr. Raphael West,” Eliza said, “I know you have already met.”
    Raphael West? I performed my curtsey to the gentleman, who had hung back throughout the introductions. His right hand clasped a book, its place marked with one finger; his expression was all wearied tolerance. I noticed that he was dressed in deepest mourning. A near loss, then, and a recent one.
    “We are entirely indebted to Mr. West, indeed,” my mother said. “You will know, Lady Gambier, that we suffered an accident in our equipage yesterday—and Mr. West sacrificed his own comfort, that we might be conveyed safely to the parsonage.”
    “I beg your pardon, Mamma,” I broke in. “Mr. West we may have encountered—but to meet Mr. Raphael West is something else entirely! Am I correct, sir, that you an artist—and the son of Mr. Benjamin West?”
    “You have found me out, Miss Austen,” he replied with a bow.
    “I was privileged to see your father’s
Christ Rejected
by the Elders while in Town this past September. It is the only representation of our Saviour that has ever contented me.”
    “My father shall be honoured to hear it.” Again I was conscious of that too-close scrutiny from Mr. West’s eyes; I understood, now, the discipline that authorised it. He was trained to look past one’s countenance, and take the measure of muscle and bone.
    “Raphael West?” Mary edged forward, her right hand dramatically at her throat. She slipped her left arm around young Caroline’s shoulders, a tender gesture I had never witnessed before, and pulled the child close in a melting maternal pose. “It is an honour to meet you, sir. I have long admired your father’s portrait of you as an infant—held in the arms of your mother! Can there be anything more eternal than the bond between a woman and her child?”
    “If so, ma’am, I have yet to encounter it,” he said; but I detected a satiric glint in his eye. Who knew, indeed, the nature of