“The idea of the interview was that she would show me her collection—the Schiaparellis, the early Chanel, the Balenciagas—and she did show me all of those. I had asked her to select one of her favorite dresses for the photograph, and that’s the dress she chose, draped over that chair.”

“It was a surprising choice?” Rowland asked; he was listening intently now. “You expected her to select a dress by some famous name?”

“Yes. I did. She explained that she had chosen it because this dress reminded her of a happy period in her life, when her children were almost grown up and before her first husband’s final illness began. And because it reminded her of an extraordinary young girl, the girl who had made it, Marie-Thérèse.

“Letitia told me that it was a very New Orleans story,” Lindsay went on. “She said I had to imagine a city very different from the one New Orleans later became. When there were fewer tourists, when it was still possible to feel the city’s past. She said I had to imagine the heat, and those beautiful houses in the French Quarter, with their wrought-iron balconies, and their atmosphere of decay. She said I had to imagine the city’s opposites, its mix of riches and poverty, its mix of races and nationalities—French, Spanish, Caribbean—its mix of religions and superstitions and tongues. She said I had to imagine a city unlike any other in America, where the extraordinary was an everyday occurrence. She made me see her New Orleans, Rowland, and then she told me the story of Marie-Thérèse.

“Letitia had made the girl’s acquaintance some years before this dress was made. Marie-Thérèse was then about fourteen, and was attending a convent school in the French Quarter, where one of Letitia’s maids had also been at school. On the maid’s recommendation, Marie-Thérèse was given some work for the Grant household, embroidering linen and so on. She had been taught her skills by the nuns at her convent, several of whom were French, and Marie-Thérèse, who was of French descent herself but born in New Orleans, was said to be their ablest pupil. When Letitia saw the work she had done, it was so exquisite that she asked to meet the girl. She was at once struck by her. She was quiet, almost excessively modest, not beautiful, but arresting—Letitia described her as jolie-laide. She had a very pale skin—magnolia pale, Letitia called it—a childlike manner, and jet-black hair. Letitia was eager to give her more work—mainly because she knew that this girl’s circumstances were very poor.”

Lindsay paused, and glanced across at Rowland. “Marie-Thérèse had a brother, and they had been orphaned, it seemed. The brother had abandoned school when he was thirteen and his sister just nine. He had become sole provider for his sister from then on.”

There was a silence. The fire hissed as a log shifted.

Rowland slowly raised his eyes to meet Lindsay’s gaze. “There was a brother? An elder brother?”