In 1839, sometime in January, Flora woke up to an excruciating abdominal pain. It felt like having her intestines replaced with live snakes which slithered around and turned her skin from inside into tatters. Wailing on the inside, she didn't bother anyone with what she believed to be the onset of her delayed menstrual cramps. As days passed, it became increasingly unlikely that such was the case. It was becoming more and more difficult to endure the pain and also hide the bulging belly at public occasions. That day, the lady's maid from the other night: Ann entered Flora's room. Seeing her in her undergarments, she asked out of concern "Is there a problem, miss?" Flora compressed her abdomen, saying "I don't know if there needs to be one."

"Is it what I think it is, miss?"

"Oh no, that's out of question. Don't forget that I am still an honourable lady without a husband."

"And;" she said in a tittering tone.

"And what?....... Yes, I am a virgin," Flora said without certainty.

She continued "I mean, I have missed my day on the monthly calendar."

"I don't know how to say this without sounding barmy, miss. Because I am not sure. No one can be in such matters. But I think someone is to blame."

Flora sat down on a chair as Ann continued in her thickening Welsh accent. "The last year around October, when you were..... merrier than usual, Sir John had you on his back as he left the room of the duchess'; you were unconscious. I asked if I should call one of the footmen but he seemed rather insistent on carrying you to....your bedroom, by himself."

Pure horror paled her face. A gasp broke the noise of the silence. The noise being the one made by her internal monologue as all the pieces seemed to fit perfectly together. It was beyond anyone's imagination, it couldn't be true. It had to be a lie. But there seemed no alternate theory which validated the present scenario. The belly which swelled like a vocal sack as it stored Flora's ribbits.

An infuriated Flora met the duchess and told her about the information she had just procured. And her reply, "How could you even consider such an allegation? That too, on a man as honourable as Sir John himself."

After a minute of shivery snivels from Lady Flora, the duchess continued "Don't be ridiculous. There's got to be a rational explanation for this. We'll see a doctor tomorrow."

"I am still a virgin." She said, losing her distinctive sophisticated tone.

"Yes you are, most definitely."

Flora left the duchess' room.

Leaving the duchess alone with her thoughts and a wild imagination which didn't find it difficult to believe that Sir John was indeed capable of something like this. The most frightening thing to her was the fact that this perspective was evidenced by her previous encounters with a domineering-drunk version of Sir John.