But now as I faced a week of inertia, I bethought myself of her married sister, Marion. After the break with Alice which led to so happy an outcome for both of us-even she had said that!-she resorted a little way out of London with a married sister and never seemed to come to town except in her sister’s company.

Now I had an interest in this married sister because Alice’s lovely maid, whom you may be sure I fucked with as much gusto as I did Alice herself, had confided to me that Marion had only just a few weeks before separated from her husband, having caught him in flagrante delicto with a milliner’s girl. She had also, Fanny told me, having learned this by listening to her own lovely mistress’s gossip, poisoned Alice’s mind against me and told Alice that I was no husband for her and still less of a lover.

I gave the darling girl a gold sovereign for that piece of news, which I put away at the back of my mind, intending to pursue it and profit from it when opportunity should provide an occasion. The occasion was now!

I knew that now that I had made Alice mine and also made of her a conspiratress against Connie Blunt as well as against Lady Bashe and her daughter Molly, that she could not and would not be too vexed with me if I should initiate Marion into those delicious and exciting pleasures which she herself had come to love. More than that, I foresaw that it could be a tableau of absolutely breathtaking and pulse-stirring triumph. If I could actually make Alice apply love potions to her very own sister in the Snuggery.

The more I considered this, the more I wished, helplessly at first, to enjoy Marion all to myself. And that was when I sent a note by messenger to her quarters in Kingsbridge, about three miles to the south of London, asking that she call upon me two days hence at two in the afternoon, as I had information of great importance to her regarding her future happiness now that her marriage had been concluded.