From that hour, he was her delighting, miserable slave. All his other loves, the affairs since the Willow Leaf, his thirteen years with Tiphaine, seemed no more than music lessons or practices on the putting green, preliminaries merely to equip him for the reality of love. In fact, these lessons were of little use, except for the patience and tact he had learned with Tiphaine. He had every need of these. Titania was as wilful as a kitten, tart as a green fruit. She established a bond of mutual guilt between them: her reckless indecorum of flying, his disloyalty of consenting to it. There could not have been a worse moment for such behaviour. Under the influence of her latest love (the eighth since Tiffany’s day) Tiphaine had set about reforming the court. Regulations were tightened up, etiquette insisted on. If it were known that Titania flew, her reputation would be lost. She knew this as well as he did. She placed a high value on her reputation, since her future pleasures must depend on it. But future pleasures were not so interesting to her as the present pleasure of tossing Tiffany between agonies of anxiety lest she should take to the air and agonies of rapture when she did. She grew so brazen about showing her wings that she even flew in public rooms, hovering overhead during state functions and harp competitions. Sometimes he dreamed of some blessed turn of events by which Titania would be expelled from Elfhame and he would follow her: they would wander over the heath, living on mushrooms and cloudberries, and perhaps take up with the gypsies. More often, he wished himself dead.

It was she, viewing him from above, who saw he was going grey. She had the grace to be embarrassed, and did not tell him. He was left to find out for himself, dully growing aware that his friends were not so friendly as they had been, appeared to shun his company, turned their backs on him when he spoke; that ladies whispered in groups, eyeing him through the sticks of their fans; that servants were impertinent. But as all he thought of was Titania, he supposed he was in disgrace because she had been caught flying and he was suspected of having seduced her into it.

One evening, during a pause in the music, the Lord Chamberlain came up to Tiffany, holding a tray covered with a black cloth. The cloth was lifted. On the tray was a lock of grizzled wool, a large pair of spectacles, and a miniature pair of crutches. Every face was averted as Tiffany was led to the door in the hillside and put out, to make the rest of his way through the mortal world.

Ailie outlived Mr Tod and his wife. By then she wasn’t good for much. She helped herself to a ring off Mrs Tod’s finger and bought a lottery ticket. It was the winning number, so she finished the rest of her days better than she ever expected to.