In the following weeks, Jonathan Lanman paid us regular visits. Often his mother accompanied him, her wide-browed face a merry second to his more composed visage, and there was gentle laughter in the sitting room again. And there was surety in the hand he rested upon the mantel in the sitting room. And comfort in the easy clarity of his opinions. Indeed, his steady, pleasant conversation with my mother recalled the row of white oaks that lined the entrance to my grandmother’s house in Oyster Bay: beautiful, immovable sentries that promised some permanence upon a mutable earth. I chatted and watched, as if playing a piano, the one hand crossing over to play the high notes while the other remains steady below, for I saw that Jonathan Lanman was paying court.

As April crossed to May, gradually small renderings of Mr. Lanman found their way onto my pages—as if I had begun writing to Papa rather than of him.

And Mama grew familiar, her dark brown eyes dancing in the candlelight, her white hands animated again as she conversed with our new friends. Indeed, one unseasonably cold evening in the middle of May, Mama returned to the sitting room after having seen the Lanmans to the door, a bright smile upon her face.

“What lovely people they are,” she mused, drawing close to the fire, “and it is marvelous to find pleasure in company again. I feel the Lanmans to be so sympathetic.”

“What was the story he spoke of, Mama? I don’t remember Mr. James having written a vampire tale.”

“Oh, no, Maisie, it was not a vampire tale at all.”

I shook my head thoughtfully. “A story about a woman’s vitality being sucked dry from the bite of a man’s marriage proposal does deserve, I think, Mama, to stand on the shelf alongside Mr. Stoker’s.”

“You have not read Mr. Stoker?” Mama’s glance was swift and alarmed.

I shook my head. “Of course not, Mama. Where would I have procured such a book?”

“Really, Maisie, I haven’t the faintest idea, but you often speak so forcefully upon things about which you know nothing.”

I pursed my lips.

“Furthermore,” she said, rubbing her hands together and holding them near the grate, “Mr. Lanman was referring to the De Gray ‘Romance’ of Mr. James.”

I nodded, remembering his fine hands receiving the cup of tea from Mama and replying in answer to her question, “No, no, Mrs. Thomas, I confess I am on the side of old Mrs. De Gray in the story, who took life as she took a cup of tea, weak, with plenty of cream and sugar, and—”

“Surely not weak!” I had interrupted.

“Maisie, let poor Mr. Lanman finish out his thought.”