Sir William tried to console his dejected future son-in-law by suggesting that Jane’s crossness with him was born of her grief for the death of Emmeline. ‘Sadness,’ he said, ‘often puts the human mind into furious angers, but it recovers, and in time Jane will recover. Delay your marriage a little and you will once again have a radiant and contented bride by your side.’

Ross replied that delay was the last thing he wanted. He did not mention the wretched question of the ring, nor say that he believed Jane was, little by little slipping away from him, that she no longer came to his bed and that only by marrying her quickly would he possess her once again. Neither did he mention the ‘tableau’ he’d seen in the drawing room of Jane and Julietta Sims lying in what appeared to him like passionate abandon on the day bed. He did not mention it because he didn’t know how to think about it, knowing only that it was curiously troubling. He said, merely, that he was lonely. He reminded Sir William that he had waited patiently for Jane for too long a time already and could not bear to wait any longer.

Sir William was sympathetic to these feelings. He wished his own marriage to take place as soon as his mourning for Emmeline was over. But this death had intervened. It had, perhaps, changed the future. For he had already seen in Jane a fiery response to her aunt’s Will. He was sure, now, that she would not for long return to being the Angel of the Baths, but would become something else or even someone else, leading a bohemian life in London, using her legacy to become as much like Emmeline as she was able to be. How would Ross fit into this new life of hers? Perhaps he would run some expensive surgery from Tite Street, making far more money than was possible in Bath? Perhaps he would father children and be happy? Or perhaps, after all, what had happened today was fatal to any union between Jane and Ross and it would not now come to pass.

As darkness came down, when the train sped away from London and the silent fields of Berkshire offered their hedges and ditches and their sleeping cattle to the moonlight’s painterly touch, the two men turned away from each other and stared out at the night. Both were tired and longed to be in a place where they might rest. For Sir William, that place was Clorinda Morrissey’s bed, but Valentine Ross realised distractedly that his mind was so agitated that wherever he went now, he would find no real peace until or unless he was reconciled with Jane. As he fell asleep, he had a dream of being in a dark hutch aboard the Rainsford, with vast waves rearing up all round the ship, at each moment threatening to send it down into the deep.

Jane was also sleeping.