“ ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s more like he comes when he wants to come, and now you have to tell me everything that happened to you with him. I overheard your telling Rowan and Michael, I admit. I was an eavesdropper. But you have to tell me. Describe him. Describe how he acted. I have to know. I’m so ferociously jealous when Oncle Julien appears to anybody else.’

“I recounted the whole experience for her. I described Julien’s dapper clothes, his gentle manner. I described the flowered china pattern. She knew it. She said it was Royal Antoinette. She wasn’t sure they even had it in his time. She said he had snatched the image out of the pantry. He was a clever ghost.

“She was deeply affected by the fact that he had said her child was alive. That meant the world to her. I had a jewel there to give her in that simple intelligence.

“ ‘But doesn’t a ghost ever lie?’ I asked. I went, in my mind, back over my experience with Rebecca. Perhaps she never lied to me. She only deceived me and there can be a difference.

“I got up out of the bed. I went to the window and looked into the oak branches. It was so beautiful here. You’d never guess that you were in the middle of the city—that the waterfront lay a scant eight blocks from here to the left, that St. Charles Avenue with its legendary streetcars was only three blocks to the right.

“ ‘You know what I think?’ I asked.

“ ‘What is it?’ she said, sitting up. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her hands looked beautiful in her big laced ruffles. Her hair fell down around her shoulders in a way I’ll never forget.

“ ‘I think I need you much more than you need me,’ I said.

“ ‘Quinn, that’s not true,’ she said. ‘I love you. You’re the first person I’ve ever fallen in love with. It came on me all last night after they brought me home. It hurts and it’s splendid and it’s real. I need you because you’re fresh and vital and you’re not part of us.’

“She sounded so earnest.

“ ‘But I am,’ I protested. ‘I told you what Julien told me. He took the place of my great-great-grandfather William, I told you.’

“ ‘But you weren’t brought up a Mayfair,’ she said. ‘And you come with a strong name and tradition of your own. You live in a manor house with its own legends and grandeur! Besides, what does it matter? I need you and I love you, that’s the point.’

“ ‘Mona, was it true what Dr. Rowan told me, that every time . . .?’