Mother looked again from her to me, and then, for answer, turned round and took the rest of the stairs, moving along the passageway without another word to us. We followed her to her room, stirring the fire in the grate a bit higher to take the chill away and laying out her night things upon the bed, but Mother stood in the middle of the room and paid us no heed, listening instead to some inner conversation.

“He does not take after my sister,” she finally said, and motioned me to her table for her drops.

It is four months tomorrow since Father died.

20 September

What is the trouble with Mother? If I watch her any more closely, or with any more disguised suspense, I may overstrain my own senses of perception. Nonetheless, all is not well with her: Color flushes into her cheeks at the oddest moments and as quickly vanishes, leaving her slightly shaky and frequently abstracted. I could wish to write something about a bellows pump and memory—how my mother flushes up and dies away, old thoughts respiring in her, and suddenly illumining what is otherwise a steady pallor.

Now we are positively overrun with men.

Mr. Ludlow Thomas is come again, and we are all in a strange flurry—he has brought a portmanteau full to bursting with books and magazines and tiny fragrant sachets from his betrothed. He is much changed since Father’s funeral: less Macassar, less city, less silly conversation. I suppose the thought of his impending marriage has burnished him to this softer, more reflective man.

Nonetheless, he remains a man of commerce come to oversee his investment; though he is delicate with George, and clearly taken with Cousin Gilroy’s hard knowledge of the matter, it is his resolve that will provide the necessary tinder to keep Grange Quarry active. Twice already, they have all journied out to Leadbetter’s Island, only to return and sequester themselves in Father’s study. Indeed, Father would have reveled in the scenes now playing round the house—the whole of the Eastern Seaboard is parsed and paved by Grange granite in our conversation. For Mr. Thomas sees the winning of the war as a boon to the granite business: Northern pride will raise a fury of great buildings to itself, he proclaimed, to which Mother replied, “Then there will be blood upon our stone.”

I see she means to be evenhanded in her displeasure with both new men.

Mr. Thomas appears quite intelligent (though he is fair), with a ready laugh that, I surmise, belies a more serious character altogether. Of the two newcomers, I prefer him, though our cousin is by far the finer animal of the two—sleek and hungry; continuing to be unnervingly restless.

(30 drops today)

23 September