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heart pounding, knew that death was following them even to Dover and the hurriedly bought passage to the Continent. It was not until they reached foreign soil that she felt safe. She and Connell, still handfast, arrived at a tiny pension in Oostende. They were lighted along a narrow passage by a woman so elderly and wizened she might have been carved of wood, who cackled about young love and the honor they did her inn. She opened the door with a winking smile and they stepped in. Connell shut the door. When he turned back her father was there, pistol drawn, to shoot her lover through the heart.
     
    Miss Tolerance woke with her own heart pounding.
    She lay in the dark listening to the tap of ivy on her window, waiting until she was calm again. She had not had that dream in a very long time. With Connell dead she had thought never to have it again. It was all lies, after all.
    It had been daylight when her father learned about her and Connell, and she had been alone. Her father had not been cold and pale but so red-faced she had feared he would have an apoplectic fit. He had called her whore, and promised to send her to a convent (no small threat from a man so opposed to Popish influence as Sir William Brereton). But first, he said, he would find Charles Connell and run his sword through the bastard’s heart. He had dragged his ruined daughter to her room in a grip so tight it had left bruises upon her arm for a week, and locked her in, unaware she had long ago learned to climb down from her window. Miss Tolerance had been very young—sixteen, just as Mrs. Brown’s sister was—and had believed that her father would challenge Connell and would be killed. She was not so lost to filial affection that she wanted her father dead; much less did she want her lover hung for his murder. Rather than see that happen she had raced to find Connell and persuaded him to fly with her—not on horseback but prosaically in the stage coach. She had never seen her father again.
    Her mother, Miss Tolerance recalled now, had sat in the parlor, bent over her needlework, during the whole brutal scene. She had said nothing, either in comfort or defense. Her brother Adam had been at away at school, but Miss Tolerance had later reason to believe that his view of the matter was in accord with their father’s. Those servants who caught her eye during the tirade had shaken their heads in silent apology for their inability to do anything to help.
    Altogether an unpleasant memory.
    When her heart had resumed its normal rhythm Miss Tolerance lit a candle and took out her inevitable recourse on sleepless nights, Mainley’s Art of the Small Sword. When that soporific text lulled her back to sleep she did not dream again.
     
    Parliament was near to its vote upon the Regency, Miss Tolerance read in the Times the next morning. That part of the paper that was not taken up with the question of Regency was devoted to news of the war in Spain, and with the progress of the Commission of Inquiry convened to examine the failures of the War Office in the Walcheren invasion. There were few notes from Court, as neither King nor Queen was capable of presiding.
    Miss Tolerance finished her tea, washed the plate which had lately held a slice of bread and butter, and dressed herself for the day. She intended to visit more inns, this time focusing upon the women who waited in hope of luring country girls into brothels. She dressed again in her blue walking dress and asked Keefe to find her a hackney coach to take her to Snow Hill Street. There, and in the vicinity, were coaching inns that served the southern and western routes. Miss Tolerance privily hoped the girl had not been seen there; anything but departure for the north suggested that Miss Evadne was not headed for Scotland, where she could be wed with no questions asked. Still, Miss Tolerance had visited many of the most prominent inns serving the northern routes the day before with no success. She must be