‘Well, I see where you come by it,’ Jane said to Laurence, later. Most of the dragons and the aviators were asleep, and the fire crackling covered their low conversation, a conversation made easier by several glasses of the wine which had been sent down for their supper, ‘all that noblesse oblige. But it is not stiffness. I like her. That is prodigious kind of her, to have taken an interest in Emily; does she think her your by-blow?’

So Laurence, who had been hoping devoutly that Jane had noticed nothing out of the ordinary, had to admit the wretched muddle. Jane laughed heartily, as he had feared she would; but under the circumstances he found that he could not be sorry to have given her a cause for unfeigned pleasure, even one he found embarrassing. ‘Whyever did you not set her right?’ she said, amused. ‘No, never mind. I expect she has not said a word about it openly, which you could answer, and I know you would not breach the subject if hot pokers were put to you. It must be very inconvenient, talking of anything awkward in your family.’

She fell silent then; it evoked too well their own awkward circumstances, and she looked down at her cup and rolled it between her palms. ‘I do beg your pardon,’

Laurence said, after a moment, ‘With all my heart.’

‘Yes,’ Jane said, 'but you beg it for the wrong things. Charging off alone, without a word, and that appalling letter you left for me, all ‘I could not love thee dear, so much,’ as though you owed me apology as your lover and not as your commander. I blushed to show it to anyone, but of course it had to be handed over. For a week, I could cheerfully have run you through myself; sitting in rooms with them reading out bits of it in their insinuating tones, and putting Sanderson over me, damn them.'

‘Jane,’ he said, ‘Jane, you must see, I could tell no one; to have put you in such a position—’

‘The position, in which you put me, regardless?’ Jane said. ‘They could not have suspected me more if I had truly possessed all of the guilty knowledge in the world.’

‘If I had spoken, you should have been obliged to stop me,’ Laurence said.

‘And a good thing too if I had,’ Jane said. ‘One private note to some Frenchman with a little rank, and they would have had the mushroom in hand within a month. Do you think every servant at Loch Laggan is incorruptible, knowing that Bonaparte would pay a million francs for the damned things?’ He recoiled inwardly, and she saw it. ‘No, of course it would not have suited you to have done the whole thing quietly, you and your damned honour.’

‘It would not have been any less treason,’ Laurence said.