A Dangerous Mourning

He did not interrupt her.

"Once he was promoted," she went on, "his chances of glory, which he did not want, were very slight; his chances of death, quick or slow, were appallingly high.

“If Octavia did learn this, no wonder she went home ashen-faced and did not speak at di

Monk agreed tacitly, allowing her to go on uninterrupted.

"Now she discovered it was not a blind misfortune which had taken everything from her." She leaned forward. "But a deliberate betrayal, and she was imprisoned with her betrayer, day after day, for as for as she could see into a gray future.

"Then what did she do? Perhaps when everyone else was asleep, she went to her father's study and searched his desk for letters, the communication which would prove beyond doubt the terrible truth." She stopped.

"Yes," he said very slowly. "Yes-then what? Basil purchased Harry's commission, and then when he proved a fine officer, prevailed upon his friends and purchased him a higher commission in a gallant and reckless tegiment. In whose eyes would that be more than a very understandable piece of favor seeking?"

"No one's," she answered bitterly. "He would protest i

"Exactly," he said quickly. "These are the fortunes of war. If you marry a soldier, it is the chance you take-all women do. He would say he grieved for her, but she was wickedly ungrateful to charge him with culpability in it all. Perhaps she had taken a little too much wine with di

She looked at Monk urgently. "That would be useless. Oc-tavia knew her father and was the only one who had ever had the courage to defy him-and reap his revenge.

"But what defiance was left her? She had no allies. Cyprian was content to remain a prisoner in Queen A

"Lady Moidore?" he prompted.

"She seemed driven, or else had retreated, to the periphery of things. She fought for Octavia's marriage in the first place, but after that it seems her resources were spent. Septimus might have fought for her, but he had no weapons."

"And Harry was dead." He took up the thread. "Leaving a void in her life nothing else could begin to heal. She must have felt an overwhelming despair, grief, betrayal and a sense

of being trapped that were almost beyond endurance, and she was without a weapon to fight back.''

"Almost?" she demanded. "Almost beyond endurance? Tired, stu

"She would be buried in unhallowed ground, with other si

His face was very grave, the dark tragedy of it utterly apparent.

"If it had not been A

"Then I seemed about to ruin it all by proving that no one had broken into the house, so a murderer must be found among the residents."

"So that is the crime-not the stabbing of Octavia, but the slow, judicial murder of Percival. How hideous, how immeasurably worse," she said slowly. "But how can we possibly

prove it? They will go undiscovered and unpunished. They will get away with it! Whoever it is-"

"What a nightmare. But who? I still don't know. The scandal would harm them all. It could have been Cyprian and Rom-ola, or even Cyprian alone. He is a big man, quite strong enough to carry Octavia from the study, if that was where it happened, up to her room and lay her on the bed. He would not even run much risk of disturbing anyone, since his room was next to hers."

It was a startlingly distressing thought. Cyprian's face with its imagination and capacity for humor and pain came sharply to her mind. It would be like him to want to conceal his sister's act, to save her name and see that she might be grieved for, and buried in holy ground.

But Percival had been hanged for it.

"Was Cyprian so weak he would have permitted that, knowing Percival could not be guilty?" she said aloud. She wished profoundly she could dismiss that as impossible, but Cyprian yielding to Romola's emotional pressure was too clear in her mind, as was the momentary desperation she had seen in his face when she had watched him unobserved. And he of all of them seemed to grieve most deeply for Octavia, with the most wounding pity.

"Septimus?" Monk asked.

It was the kind of reckless, compassionate act Septimus might perform.

"No," she denied vehemently. "No-he would never permit Percival to hang."

"Myles would." Monk was looking at her with intense emotion now, his face bleak and strained. "He would have done it to save the family name. His own status is tied inextricably with the Moidores'- in fact it is totally dependent on it. Araminta might have helped him-and might not."

A sharp memory returned to Hester of Araminta in the library, and of the charged emotion between her and Myles. Surely she knew he had not killed Octavia-and yet she was prepared to let Monk think he had, and watch Myles sweat with fear. That was a very peculiar kind of hatred-and power. Was it fueled by the horror of her own wedding night and its violence, or by his rape of the maid Martha-or by the fact

that they were conspirators in concealing the ma

"Or Basil himself?" she suggested.

"Or even Basil for reputation-and Lady Moidore for love?" he said. "In fact Fenella is the only one for whom I can find no reason and no means." His face was white, and there was a look of such grief and guilt in his eyes she felt the most intense admiration for his i

"Of course it is all only speculation," she said much more gently. "I know of no proof for any of it. Even if we had learned this before Percival was ever charged, I ca