Goodwife Baggerlie took pleasure in Campion’s disappearance, much as bad news will always cheer a prophet of doom. Goodwife had joined eagerly in the Slythes’ persecution of their daughter, a persecution that was rooted in a distaste for her looks, her spirit, and her apparent unwillingness to subdue her soul to the tedious boredom of Puritan existence. Now that Campion had fled, Goodwife dredged from the past an endless catalogue of trivial sins, each magnified in Goodwife’s sullen mind. “She has a devil, master, a devil.”

Faithful Unto Death Hervey, who had joined the search, looked at Goodwife. “A devil?”

“Her father, God bless him, could control it.” Goodwife sniffed and dabbed at red eyes with her apron. “‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.’”

“Amen,” said Scammell.

“Praise his word,” said Ebenezer, who had never been beaten by his father, though he had often watched as his sister was lashed with the great belt.

Faithful Unto Death Hervey steepled long fingers in front of his bobbing Adam’s apple. “‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.’”

“Indeed and indeed.” Scammell searched his mind for a suitable verse of scripture so he would not be left behind in this company. Nothing came to mind except inappropriate words from the Song of Solomon, words he dared not say aloud: “Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.” He groaned inwardly. He wondered what her breasts were like, breasts that he had yearned to fondle, and now, perhaps he would never know. She had gone, taking her beauty with her, and taking, too, Scammell’s hope of wealth. “We must watch and pray.”

“Amen,” Ebenezer said. “Watch and pray.”

Campion’s supposition was right. Grenville Cony was, indeed, a lawyer, only now, according to Mrs. Swan, much more. “He’s a knight, dear, Sir Grenville, and he’s so high and mighty that he doesn’t notice the likes of you and I. He’s a politician. A lawyer and a politician!” Her words left no doubt as to her opinions of both categories. Lawyers, to Mrs. Swan, were the lowest form of life. “Killing’s too good for them, dear. Bloodsuckers, dear. If God hadn’t invented sin, then the lawyers would, just to line their own purses.” She expounded further so that her life, to Campion, seemed to have been a perilous journey between the dangers of various illnesses on the one side, and the plottings of predatory lawyers on the other. “I could tell you stories, dear,” said Mrs. Swan, and proved it by doing so; many of the stories of a complexity that would have done credit to a lawyer, but all distinguished by endings in which Mrs. Swan, single-handedly, confounded the entire legal profession.

Yet Campion could see little choice but to visit Sir Grenville Cony and here, once more, fortune smiled on her. A neighbor of Mrs. Swan, a French tailor, knew Sir Grenville’s address which turned out to be one of the massive houses in the Strand.