Miss Waldron did not slap the maid when she arrived with her steamer trunk, but she refused to tip the driver. The man caused such a scene that Madame Yuplait had to pay him herself. For this embarrassment Miss Waldron was sent to the attic.

The attic bedrooms could only be locked from the outside. They were the hottest rooms in the summer and the coldest in the winter. The walls were orange and the ceilings red. Girls were sent there to be broken.

At Madame Yuplait’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, Miss Waldron became acquainted with which fork to use, the mysteries of the corset, and the proper way to enter a room. She learned how to arrange flowers, how to play the harp, how to keep her stomach from making embarrassing noises in public. She was taught how to smile through pain, how to turn her head into the light, how to lay her hand on a table. She practiced the intonation of certain words and phrases in French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Swedish, and Italian, as well as proper English, because Madame said her accent was abominable.

Miss Waldron came close to asking her father for help. She wrote him a plaintive letter full of promises and regrets, but she never mailed it.

She tried to think of other people who might come to her aid. The other students respected her wildness and enjoyed gossiping about her adventures, but few would cross the line and call her their friend. Miss Waldron considered her voice instructor, her makeup instructor, her poise instructor. Then she remembered the Italian.

She found Maria and Fredo living together in a small Soho flat, both having renounced their inheritances. Maria now tended her hair herself. It was full of split ends. She kept a tiny pair of scissors on a ribbon around her neck, and whenever there was a lull in the conversation, she would begin individually clipping the ragged strands. Fredo drew pictures of tourists on the street. At night they made love so loudly the neighbors called the police.

Miss Waldron began to visit them on Saturdays after confession. Together they would go to the local saloons and drink until early evening. No one at the finishing school questioned these long absences at first. But Miss Waldron’s father had his private detectives and Madame had her intuition, so it was not long before the group was discovered and flushed out.

Ten lashes were given to Miss Waldron’s soft white behind, as well as two weeks of nothing but oatmeal. But it was too late. The damage had already been done, for on one sunny afternoon, at a heavy round wooden table in the Brightenshead Tavern, Fredo had introduced Miss Waldron to the great white hunter Mister Willoughby Lowe.