Only Laura Keene publicly objects. What could be more tasteless than this rank cupidity? The play runs for a month to full houses.

Keene will actually suffer more than Sleeper from the assassination. She’d made her way to the box, held Lincoln during the doctor’s initial examination, since his wife was unable to do so. His blood soaked her skirts and petticoats.

The public is deeply uncomfortable with the thought of their dying president in the arms of an actress. Her career is as a comedienne. No one finds her funny anymore.

—

John once gave Rosalie the courage to leave her house. Now he’s taken it back. She no longer even wishes to sit and listen to Edwin’s friends. There is no one she can ask to share her bed now that Mother is gone to Asia and, with no one there as witness, she sobs through the night, her hands pressed against her face. Her books no longer engage her. Her grief is a well with no bottom. Each day lasts longer than she can endure and night is no respite.

All the Booths, though mostly Edwin, continue to receive threatening letters. But another sort of letter comes as well. More than one young woman writes to say that she was secretly married to John, or secretly engaged to John, or has secretly had John’s child. All have pressing financial needs. Edwin deals with these claims swiftly and coldly.

One letter contains the picture of a child. A girl—her name is Ogarita Rosalie Booth. Rosalie feels that the resemblance is undeniable. While Edwin is in Washington, Rosalie asks Ogarita’s mother, Izola, to bring the child to the house. Izola is an actress, darkly Spanish in looks, and she shares the details of her secret and passionate marriage. Rosalie hadn’t realized how consoling it would be to talk about John with someone who still thinks he’s wonderful. She becomes uncharacteristically loquacious—telling stories about John as a boy, a rapscallion, for sure, but delightfully so, an imp, a larker. They agree that John was a mere tool of greater forces, pressured by the Knights of the Golden Circle into a thing he would never have thought of on his own. This is as close to happiness as she’s come since April 15th.

Ogarita looks less like John in the flesh, but her coloring is his, and maybe there is something about her eyes?

Rosalie feels that Izola’s grief is real and if that’s real, it follows that the rest is also. John left Rosalie some oil stocks. They don’t amount to much, but, at forty-two, it’s the first money she’s ever had that’s all her own. She presses some of it into Izola’s hands. They agree to meet again.