For one moment, the hall was utterly silent. Then the Dowager Duchess's face went from white to red.
"How dare you?" she whispered. "How dare you speak of my son? Do you imagine the Duke of Ravenshire wanders about at midnight keeping company with housemaids?"
Lady Cecilia gave a small, delicate laugh, but her eyes on Clara were burning with hatred. "She is clearly a liar as well as a thief, Your Grace," Cecilia said, "and a very bold one."
"I am not a thief," said Clara, her voice steady though tears were burning behind her eyes. "I have never stolen anything in my life."
"The bracelet was in your pillow," said the Dowager coldly. "My husband's diary was in your mattress. Your ribbon was outside his door. I need nothing more." She drew herself up tall. "You will leave this house tonight. You will leave without wages and without a character. No respectable family in England will ever employ you again. And I will write to the magistrate this evening: if you are seen in this county again, you will be arrested as a thief."
Somebody began to cry: it was Hannah, sobbing into her hands in the corner, her whole body shaking. Lady Cecilia turned and looked at her maid; Hannah went silent at once.
Outside, it had begun to rain.
Clara was given a quarter of an hour to pack. She did not need that long; everything she owned fit into one small canvas bag: two old dresses, a shawl, a hairbrush that had been her mother's, and a few shillings saved in a twist of paper. Betsy helped her, crying the whole time.
"It isn't right," she kept saying. "It isn't right, Clara. Everyone knows it isn't right."
"I know, Betsy," Clara said gently. "Don't cry. You'll get yourself into trouble."
At the bottom of the servants' stairs, the other servants had gathered in the passage. Nobody spoke; a few of them would not look at her, but one by one, quietly, several of them pressed something into her hands as she walked past: a penny, a halfpenny, a small wrapped piece of bread and cheese. Clara could not speak; she only nodded her thanks.
The butler opened the back door. Rain was falling in gray sheets across the stable yard, the wind bitter and cold, and it was nearly dark. Clara pulled her shawl tighter and stepped out onto the wet stones.
"Wait."
Clara turned. Lady Cecilia was standing in the doorway behind her, warm and dry in her silk gown, with the light of the house behind her. She came out onto the step, just beyond the reach of the rain. She looked at Clara's cap—the fine white lace cap now missing its ribbon.
"You will not need this anymore," Cecilia said.
And she reached out and pulled it off Clara's head, tossing it into a puddle of mud at the foot of the step.