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  “Little Bride! Have you forgotten me? Don’t go away!”

  She paused on tiptoe, looking from him to Ruth. Her hands were clasped behind her; she stood half turned away, in the attitude that Peter remembered so well, poised for flight.

  “Have you forgotten the poor wretch whom you comforted, Bride? I’ve come to thank you.”

  The elfish little smile peeped out. Bride came forward, dancing.

  “Yes, I remember. Of course, I remember. Did you—oh, did you go back to her?”

  “Thanks to you, little lady. Here ‘she’ is—come with me to tell you that it’s all right again.”

  Bride nodded and smiled to Ruth.

  “I am so glad! I could not bear to see you so unhappy. It hurt me so. Do you understand, I wonder?”

  She had drawn closer to Ruth, and sank down on her knees now, waving to Ruth to sit down on the tree-stump.

  “I do understand.” Ruth stretched out her hand. “And I’m—so very sorry!”

  “For me?” The little lady looked up at her wonderingly. “It’s so long ago! Too long to remember! And you—you are happy now?”

  “Very, very happy,” Ruth answered. “But if it had not been for you, we should both have been miserable still.”

  The little lady came to her feet. She pressed her hands to her eyes, hiding them, but they saw her lips quiver.

  “That hurts, too. You are happy, and you don’t want me.” Her hands came away, and she was smiling again. “Never mind, I’m not real, you know. I died—oh, long, long ago! Thank you for coming.”

  She kissed her fingers to them, and danced back, laughing a little.

  “Ah, don’t go! Not yet.” Ruth got up quickly. “Please stay. Just a little longer.”

  “No. Oh, no! You don’t want me now. Goodbye.

  Peter held out his hands again.

  “Little lady, won’t you let me touch you?”

  She came forward, tentatively.

  “Touch me? Why must you? You see, I’m dead.”

  But she held out her hand.

  Peter took it gently, and bent to kiss the slender fingers. And as he did so he heard a quick step behind him, an exclamation, and a cry from Ruth. He turned, and saw a tall, black-haired man standing watching him. He had come down the cutting, and stood now a few paces away, his hat in his hand, a frown in his anxious eyes.

  The little lady moved first. A sobbing sigh escaped her, and she went falteringly towards the newcomer.

  “You’ve—come back—at last! Anthony, forgive me!”

  As one in a dream Peter saw the strange man go to meet Bride, and heard him speak.

  “I’ve come to ask your forgiveness, Bride.”

  Then the little lady seemed to crumple up, but the man’s arms were round her, and she fell against his breast. The black head was bent over hers for a long minute, and then raised swiftly.

  “Whoever you may be—please—she has fainted! Would you—”

  Ruth ran to him. Between them they laid Bride down upon the soft moss, while Peter ran to where he knew a brook wound its way through the wood.

  “You’re—you’re—Captain Jermyn?” Ruth asked.

  He was kneeling beside Bride, chafing her cold hands.

  “Yes, yes. She’s so cold. Do you think—will—”

  “She has only fainted,” soothed Ruth, a hand on the little lady’s wrist. “My fiancé has gone for water. It is all right.”

  “Your fiancé? I was afraid when I saw—Ah, the colour is coming back into her cheeks. Bride, Bride! Look up! I ought not to have startled her so.” His eyes never left that pointed, elfin face.

  “Hush! She’ll come round. Give her time.”

  “I went up to the Place and heard that Colonel Flower had sold it, and that—my Bride—my beautiful Bride—was mad!”

  “It happened when she heard that you were killed. Oh, why have you stayed away all this time?”

  He stroked the feathery curls back from the little lady’s brow.

  “I was taken prisoner. Nearly killed.” He touched a long scar on his temple. “It knocked me silly. Couldn’t remember anything. I was sent into Switzerland after a time with a batch of prisoners. Didn’t know who I was or anything about myself. At the end of the war I was shipped over to England and Dr. Strange—you’ve heard of him? He’s a marvel—put me right. It took ages, but he did it, and I’m here.”

  Peter came running with in his brandy-flask. Ruth took it from him, but it was Jermyn who bathed the little lady’s forehead.

  She gave a fluttering sigh, and her long lashes lifted. Straight into her lover’s eyes she looked, and, smiling as one awakened from a long sleep, stretched out her hands.

  “I’ve been—dreaming! Anthony dear!”

  Ruth and Peter drew away quietly to the cutting. Just once they looked back, and the little lady was in Jermyn’s arms, her lips to his. One of her tiny white hands caressed his dark head, the other clung to the collar of his tweed coat. Silently Ruth and Peter went down the cutting. Not until they came out on to the road did Peter open his lips.

  “We’re told that the age of miracles is past,” he remarked.

  Ruth caught her breath on a sob.

  “Oh, my dear! The poor little thing—and he! It’s—it’s a good world!”

  “Not so bad,” agreed Peter, and kissed her.

  THE END

  READING “THE LITTLE LADY”

  It is quite incredible to me, that if this story had ended with its first “chapter,” two thousand-some words in, it would stand as Georgette Heyer’s only paranormal work.

  You come through that first encounter between the lovelorn Peter and ethereal Bride quite ready to be convinced that she is the ghost she claims to be – the atmosphere of the wood, from the outset, is deliberately eerie and otherworldly, as is the sprite-like Bride herself, and had the story concluded with her disappearance into the leaves, her work on this earthly plane complete when she convinces Peter to return to his fiancée Ruth and apologise for the fight that ended their engagement, then “The Little Lady” would have remained the vaguely supernatural fairy tale that it initially appeared.

  But Heyer does not end it there, instead giving us Peter reunited with his Ruth, the two of them determined to return to that enchanted wood to thank Bride for her intercession in their relationship – and, no doubt, to check on her wellbeing. It is interesting that neither Peter nor Ruth believes for an instant that she might be other than mortal, as far as we can tell, despite her lachrymose words and the bell-like distant laughter and her anachronistic mode of dress—which is never explained, by the way. Instead, they are filled with pity over her plight, the desolate young woman left mad with grief after the Great War has taken away her one chance at lasting happiness.

  Of course, it is estimated that upwards of 750 000 British soldiers died in that war, with a further quarter million dying as a result, which was something like 12% of the nation’s total population at the time. There were many young women similarly stricken with such losses – Heyer, too, lost those close to her; everyone did – so when the story takes a turn from the paranormal to the psychological, and we are told, with some relish, by the local hostelry’s landlady the tragic tale of Bride’s lost love, Captain Jermyn, we begin to understand that sweet, soulful Bride is not dead but dissociative, and the story becomes one of coping with trauma and a study in human behaviour, making it clear that real world demons – and ghosts – are even scarier than their fictional, sepulchral counterparts.

  The continued story also acts, perhaps, as a way to exorcise some of those ghosts and demons – especially given the wish-fulfillment nature of the conclusion.

  The too-fortuitous return of the earnest Captain Jermyn, who knows how many years later (he was one of the early casualties; the war began in 1914 and ended in 1918; the story was published in 1922 – it could well be that he was MIA, presumed dead, for eight years at the time of this tale), right when Bride has allowed the gentle Peter to take her