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wall of the park, and had threaded her way about the ancient trunks, enjoying the green-hued solitude and the lovely smells of the trees. She had emerged far down the driveway, only a few yards from the gates, which stood wide-open, as they usually did during the daytime. Then she had proceeded along the village street toward home. There had been no one in sight except Mrs. Jones, who was standing at the gate outside the vicarage indulging in a gossip with Mrs. Lewis, theapothecary’s wife. And Mr. Henchley was brushing sawdust out through the door of his butcher’s shop at the far end of the street for someone else to have to deal with. Agnes had put her head down and hurried toward home.
    She had thought herself safe until she heard the clopping hooves of an approaching horse. She had not looked up. Horses were not an uncommon sight in the village, after all. But she had had no choice as it drew closer. It would be very ill-mannered of her not to acknowledge a neighbor. So she raised her head and looked straight into the sleepy green eyes of the very guest she had most wanted to avoid. Indeed she had no reason to avoid any of the others, all of whom were strangers to her.
    It was wretchedly bad luck.
    And she had despised herself anew as she looked at him. She had shaken off the whole nonsense of falling in love only weeks after that infernal ball. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before, and she would make good and sure nothing like it ever happened again. Then Sophia had told her about the Survivors’ Club coming here. And Agnes had convinced herself that if she set eyes upon him—which she would take great pains not to do—she would be able to look at him quite dispassionately and see him merely as one of Lord Darleigh’s aristocratic friends with whom she happened to have a slight acquaintance.
    He was quite impossibly handsome. And a whole lot of other things she would prefer not to put into words—or even thoughts, if the wretched things could only be suppressed.
    Which they could not.
    All the nonsense from last autumn had come rushing back, just as if she did not have a droplet of common sense in her whole body or brain.
    “I wonder,” Dora said as they returned to their chairs,“if we will be invited to the house at all, Agnes. I suppose not, but you are a particular friend of the viscountess, and I am her music teacher as well as Lord Darleigh’s. Indeed, he remarked to me just last week that since his friends will merely ridicule his efforts on the harp, I had better come and play it for them as it ought to be played, and then they would not laugh. But he was laughing as he said it. I think his friends tease him a great deal, and that means that they love him, does it not? I believe they must be very close friends. I do not suppose Lord Darleigh will invite me to play, will he?”
    Agnes shook off her own foolish palpitations and focused her attention upon her sister, who both looked and sounded wistful. Dora was twelve years her senior and had never married. She had lived at home in Lancashire until their father remarried, a year before Agnes’s own marriage. Then she had expressed her intention to answer the advertisement she had seen for a resident music teacher in the village of Inglebrook in Gloucestershire. Her application had been accepted, and she had moved here and stayed and prospered in a modest way. She was well liked and respected here, and her talent was recognized. She always had more work than she could accept.
    Was she happy, though? She had a whole neighborhood of friendly acquaintances but no particular friend. And no beau. She and Agnes had grown very close since they had lived together here—as they had always been at home. But they were for all intents and purposes of different generations. Dora was contented, Agnes believed. But happy?
    “Perhaps you will indeed be invited to play,” she said. “All hosts like to entertain their houseguests, and what better way than