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general’s leg-bone, which, after all, he no longer needed for any practical purpose.
    Regarding Lady Cecily, what concerning her difficulty did I know surely?
    Next to nothing.
    Very well; what could I surmise?
    I wrote:
    Her mother is in seclusion
    I cannot imagine Lady Theodora favouring forced marriage
    Lady Cecily has been taken away from her mother
    Probably Sir Eustace’s idea
     
    Which made sense. What to do with an unconventional, politically opinionated, distressingly left-handed daughter who has been scandalously kidnapped and will therefore be considered spoilt goods upon the marriage market? Why, bypass the usual coming-out by arranging some private disposal of the girl, probably by financial inducement.
    It appeared that the two dragons with whom I had seen Cecily had charge of her for the time being. My task now was to identify and locate them.
    I wrote,
    Her chaperones, proud and richly clothed, seem to be of noble blood
    The chaperones seemed to wield familial authority over her
    They dressed her in greenish yellow; might they be of Aesthetic taste?
    Cecily and her entourage took a cab, number _______
    She most likely got the fan attending a pink tea—the Viscountess of Inglethorpe’s pink tea?
     
    All in all, not very helpful.
    Although I could not remember the number of the cab, still, I decided, I could be moderately proud of myself for having remembered the name of the viscountess.
    Indeed, it was my only clue.
    If any of the society papers might, perhaps, have run a little “piece” about her pink tea party and…supposing that the chaperones had attended along with Lady Cecily…if I could find an account that listed the names of the guests…
    But as my eyes turned towards the pile of rubbish I would have to read, I groaned aloud. Even if I found what I was looking for, then it would be necessary for me somehow to sort through the guests in order to find Lady Cecily’s ogresses-in-waiting. Or even worse, what if I scanned the confounded papers for hours and hours and, after all, the viscountess’s blasted tea party were not even there ? A viscountess was not, after all, the social equal of a duke’s wife or even an earl’s; what if no society reporter had bothered to—
    An idea caught hold with such force that my breath snagged in my throat. I let it stay there for a moment as I considered. Then, breathing out, I smiled.
     
     
    While I had no actual knowledge of what a society reporter might be like, I could imagine: a female with more education than means, a genteel miss rather like a governess, obliged to make a living until she found a man to take care of her. Her clothing might be plain, even threadworn, but never lacking in taste. An object of kindness and condescension.
    In great haste I began to hunt up my very proper, all-purpose brown tweed suit. Because I had skipped luncheon, there would still be time today.
    An hour or so later, in the aforementioned well-worn suit, neatly gloved and hiding beneath a brown hat’s veil, with a stenographer’s notebook and a bundle of pencils in hand, I presented myself at the door of the Viscount of Inglethorpe’s city residence.
    To the oversized tin soldier of a butler who eventually answered my knock, I said, “I am from the Women’s Gazette. ” I had checked many back issues of this much-admired publication, found no mention of anything Inglethorpe, and felt myself to be treading on fairly safe ground as I went on. “They have sent me to see whether I might do a feature on the viscountess’s pink tea.”
    “A bit late, aren’t you?” rumbled the butler. “That was over a week ago.”
    When in doubt, say nothing. I replied only with a meek smile.
    His brows drew together. “Don’t you have a card?”
    “I’m new,” I improvised. “They haven’t printed me one yet.”
    “Oh, so that’s the way it is. They send out a novice a week late.” I did not mind the resentment in his tone, for it showed that I had guessed rightly: