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is that Sir Robert must be all to pieces, or he’d never allow his heir to marry a tradesman’s daughter. And yet there’s never been so much as a whisper up to now that the Fontclairs were hard up.”
    “Maybe it ain’t the money Mr. Fontclair fancies, sir.” “Sentimentalist! It certainly isn’t the girl. When Fontclair told me he was going to be married, he had much more the air of being in harness than in love.” He added thoughtfully, “I don’t know much about Miss Craddock. Her father keeps her under close guard; it’s said he’s afraid of fortune-hunters. There’d be a certain justice in it if she mended some poor devil’s fortunes—God knows, her father’s been the ruin of enough men. He began as a moneylender, you know, and even among that vampirical lot, he had a reputation for ruthlessness.”
    “So Mr. Fontclair’s asked you to be groomsman at his wedding, sir?”
    “Yes, and in the meantime to spend a fortnight at his father’s country place in Cambridgeshire. Some sort of family party—the bride and groom, the bride’s father, and some of the groom’s relations.” He frowned. “Why on earth should he want to get on such an intimate footing with me all of a sudden? We’ve only met once that I know of, at a gaming hell a few weeks ago. He was threatening to make an ass of himself, and I sent him home to bed.”
    Dipper shot a shrewd glance at him. There had to De more to the story than that. You did not ask a cove to be groomsman at your wedding in return for his chucking you out of a gambling house. But if Mr. Kestrel had done something handsome, there would be no getting him to talk about it.
    He fell to polishing the buttons on Julian's coat. “A lot of the swell mob goes to weddings," he reminisced. “If there's a big crowd, and you got the right kind of duds, you can mingle with the guests, and nobody'll ever know you wasn’t invited. They're bad places to try and lift any wipes, on account of with all the blubbering that goes on, everybody's always using theirs. Tickers is easy to get, though—nobody's thinking about what time it is. I never had the heart to work a wedding, meself. When people is as happy as that, how can you queer it for 'em by filing their clys? I ask you, sir."
    “With sensibilities like yours, I often wonder how you ever managed to steal anything at all.”
    “I picked and chose me marks, sir, when I could afford to. Gentry coves like you, sir, as looked as if they wouldn't miss a few quid here and there.”
    “You can't judge a man's finances by his clothes. Some of the heaviest swells in London have some of the lightest pocketbooks.” “Oh, yes, I know that now, sir.”
    “Since you came to work for me, you mean,” said Julian, amused. He looked ruefully at the pile of bills on the table. “You know, it wouldn't be amiss for us to spend a fortnight out of London, far from gaming tables and importunate tailors. Our finances are becoming a little . . . involved.” He glanced at Hugh's letter again, and sighed. “The devil of it is, I shall have to go. It's the only way I shall ever find out why I was invited.”
3. Bellegarde
    Philippa found it hard to be eleven years old. She knew she should be docile, like her sister Joanna, and do as older people told her without asking for explanations. But that was so difficult, when she felt fully as wise as any adult she knew, except her mother. Her father was a very important man, of course—Sir Robert Fontclair, a baronet, landlord, and magistrate. Yet Philippa, summing up his character judiciously, could not help thinking he did not understand people very well. He had, perhaps, a bit too much honour and not enough common sense.
    It might be that he was weighed down by his own authority. Philippa had a poor opinion of authority and did not submit to it very well. When she was forbidden to do something she had set her heart on, she thought the prohibition over carefully, and if she decided it was unfair