For the moment she has disappeared from view, folded back into the discreet social currents in which she has been moving around Europe ever since her enforced removal from Royal Lodge.

Sarah Ferguson, whose disgraced former husband Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has struck a forlorn figure on solitary dog-walking duties or gazing across the bleak Norfolk countryside surrounding his new home at Sandringham, knows this is a waiting game.

But the unanswered questions about her financial and personal ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have not gone away; if anything they have multiplied.

Lawmakers in the US continue to press for her to come forward and testify to Congress about those links.

Friends loyally describe her self-imposed solitude as ‘recalibrating’.

But this week it emerged that this adjustment to a life stripped – like Andrew – of her royal title, privileges and position has not been entirely uncomfortable.

It turns out that she has been holed-up in a £2,000-a-night pine‑clad chalet in a quiet resort close to the exclusive Mayrlife health clinic in Austria where the super-rich and supermodels are drawn to its remoteness and privacy, as well as its eccentric weight-loss programmes.

For the former Duchess of York, the seclusion of this peaceful life was rudely interrupted when she was photographed emerging from the rear of a black Mercedes people-carrier with tinted windows.

Wearing heavy-framed spectacles and with her distinctive reddish hair piled discreetly under a baseball cap, she bore little resemblance to her last official outing alongside Andrew at the Royal Family funeral for the Duchess of Kent seven months ago.

Only her favourite hooped gold earrings that she wore that September day remained in place as she stood holding a teal tote bag while talking to an aide.

It was the first time she had been seen in months, and the strain of her long absence was etched into an otherwise expressionless face.

For someone who has long chased an elusive happiness there was sadness in the eyes behind those unfamiliar glasses, even if she was caught unawares by the presence of photographers she had for so long avoided.

Whether it was sadness that her discreet bolthole had finally been uncovered, or the knowledge that her ordeal was far from over, was unclear.

For such a normally gregarious (and publicity-prone) person, the idea of reclusive isolation far from family and friends cannot be easy.

All the same, her brief sighting is a tantalising one; her disappearing act not only triggered a global hunt but also wild speculation.

The former duchess left Royal Lodge in Windsor at the beginning of February and was said to have travelled as far away as Australia, Argentina (where her late mother lived), the Caribbean, Canada and the Persian Gulf.

There were reports that she had been put up in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier by her former pre-marriage love Paddy McNally and had been hiding out in Priscilla Presley’s Los Angeles guest house – both untrue.

Other apparent destinations including Dubai, Switzerland and Ireland were inconclusive to say the least.

Amateur sleuths scoured her social media platforms for evidence that she was perhaps being pampered in the many luxurious spa resorts to which she has in the past disappeared – and to which she has paid gushing tribute.

Many of these have been havens during earlier crises in her turbulent life such as the wellness sanctuary on the Thai island of Ko Samui she hunkered down in after the storm over the cash-for-access storm involving Andrew in 2010.

Other closer-to-home theories suggested she was staying with her daughter Princess Eugenie in Portugal or the ‘granny annexe’ of Princess Beatrice’s Cotswolds home. Neither was correct.

Her emergence has also appeared to put paid to the notion that she had been leading a peripatetic sofa-surfing life.

Asked about the photographs yesterday, a close friend who has remained in text contact with her since her departure from Britain said: ‘She has been in the same place all the time, lying low and trying to work out her next move.’

Another of her old London friends told me: ‘She’s not been hiding exactly, it’s just that she’s not been found. She is in touch, not regularly but still contactable on her mobile phone. I send her messages from time to time asking how she is getting on and she always responds, if not immediately.

‘I am not saying she is happy about the situation she is in; in fact, she is deeply troubled. Anyone who has been stripped of all her dignity would recognise that.’

Despite no longer having any kind of public life – she has lost all her charitable work – I can reveal she still has a personal assistant in the UK with whom she remains in contact.

There are no plans, however, for her to return home yet.

‘She is going through a process, taking time out to recalibrate,’ one source told me.

‘Everything has gone: title, home, purpose, the lot. So, for these last weeks she has been trying to get her strength back and work out what she is going to do.

‘She’s not at the stage yet where she knows what the next steps will look like. It seems sensible not to break cover until she has some idea what shape her life is going to take.’

One of Ferguson’s circle said: ‘Sarah’s still got friends looking out for her and some of them have the money to help her to continue to hide out. But she can’t do that for ever. This scandal is going to go on for years. Sooner or later she’s going to have to face the music.’

In many ways her decision to hide away in an Austrian ski village was not so unexpected. Less showy than the celebrity-heavy resorts of France and Switzerland, she chose somewhere she was familiar with.

She booked into the Mayrlife resort on Lake Altaussee – which charges up to £6,700 for a two-week recuperative stay – two years ago, after being diagnosed with a malignant melanoma.

‘The area is absolutely beautiful, and it’s very quiet most of the time, so it’s the perfect place for a high-profile figure such as her to lie low,’ says the friend. ‘But it is also the case that Fergie has hardly ventured out and has not drawn attention to herself.’

At the time, it’s thought she was occupying a two-bedroom chalet in woodland designed to maintain ‘maximum privacy’. Each one boasts a spacious loft-like living area, and a private terrace with direct lake views and includes its own private spa area with a sauna and steam bath.

The wider facilities of the clinic, which has long been popular with celebrities including actresses Nicole Kidman, Rebel Wilson and Melanie Griffith, include access to a full suite of medical, nutritional and spa services. Mayrlife is also popular with Russian billionaires who like to block-book rooms for their entire families along with bodyguards and nannies.

It is named after the Austrian physician Franz Mayr, who in the 1920s believed that the root of good health was the gut. Today, his disciples swear by daily doses of Epsom salts for ‘intestinal cleansing therapy’.

The clinic offers individually-tailored programmes to help with everything including healthy aging, stress control and weight care – while guests focus on mindfulness, rest and being looked after.

Apart from its wellness remedies it is an ideal sanctuary for an ex-royal to escape her past while planning her future.

When she stayed at the clinic in January 2024, she posted a photograph of herself on Instagram on a lakeside walk, thanking staff for taking ‘gentle care of me in the past weeks’. She said the stay had allowed her ‘time for recuperation’.

Fergie’s reappearance prompts two questions: how much longer will she stay, and who is paying?

‘She has no shortage of rich friends,’ says one figure. ‘Clearly things may change now she has been found.’

Discovery may be the least of her worries. While she has not been accused of wrongdoing there have been growing calls for her to speak to the authorities about her relationship with paedophile financier Epstein.

Last month US Congressman Suhas Subramanyam wrote to her urging her to cooperate with the US government’s ‘investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking operations’ and to testify about her ‘close personal and business ties’ with the businessman.

In the UK, nine police forces and the National Crime Agency are investigating the Epstein files which contain a series of email exchanges between Ferguson and her former friend.

In one, she described him as ‘a legend’, adding: ‘I am at your service. Just marry me.’

Following Andrew’s arrest on charges of misconduct in public office the pressure on his former wife to reveal what she knows will only increase.

And then?

‘Sarah will get by,’ says a friend. ‘She’s a survivor. People think she’s the orchestrator of her own downfall but she’s indestructible.’