"Not—not prove it? We've got to!" He was outraged. It was monstrous! Unbearable! Delphine Lambert had abandoned two tiny children to the cruelty of strangers—two vulnerable, damaged children who needed her even more than most. Then she had murdered the most brilliant, dazzling, creative architect of the age, all to further her own comfort and ambition, and to find a good marriage for her adopted daughter—whether she wanted it or not. Appearance had been everything, beauty, glitter—as shallow as the skin. The passion and hope and pain of the heart beneath had been thrown away. He could not let himself think it could all just happen and no one could call for any accountability, any justice, any regret at all. All kinds of arguments raged through his head, and even as he thought of each one, he knew it was no use.

"Can we?" Hester asked, her face puckered. She had not known Keelin Melville; she had not even been at court this time, as she had in most of the other cases he had cared about deeply. It was strange, and he realized now he had missed her. But Gabriel Sheldon was tied inextricably to it, because Martha Jackson was part of his household, part of Perdita's life, and because he too knew what it was like to be disfigured, to know his face, the outer part of him everyone saw and judged him by so easily, filled people with revulsion, even with fear. He was an outcast of the same kind, a victim of a world where sight ruled so much. Hester understood it.

And she understood Keelin Melville, a woman fighting to succeed in a world where men made all the rules and judged only by the yardstick of their own preconceptions, not by reality of courage or skill or achievement. She had seen others sacrificed to it, and eventually crushed.

"We must!" he said fiercely, leaning farther forward. "We must find a way."

"It's all gone," she pointed out, her mouth tight, her eyes sad. "Will they dig her up again, do you suppose?"

He had to be honest. There was not the slightest chance, not on the belief he had now. No one would want to consider it, to raise such a hideous possibility, face the suit for criminal libel if they were wrong.

"No."

She looked at his empty plate. "Do you want some more soup?"

"No! I want to think of a way to prove what happened to Keelin Melville and find some justice for those two abandoned and unloved children!" He sighed. "And I want some kind of vengeance ... some balancing of the scales."

She sat in silence for a while again, cupping her chin in her hands.