“Now Maisie, you’ll stretch your skin if you make such a face, and it will hang in pockets around your chin, making you jowly before you reach twenty-five.”

I dutifully adjusted my face, resolving to continue my own thoughts.

“But what sort of picnic, I wonder, hot or cold …” Mama paused.

“Cold,” I answered, and the inward door swung slowly shut.

“Yes, that is best.” Mama nodded at the new girl serving coffee, accepting the Sèvres cup into her hands with an appreciative sigh.

“When I arose this morning”—I leaned forward so none but Mama would hear—“I parted my curtains and saw someone moving through the trees down by the boathouse.”

“Saw someone?” Her butter knife did not pause.

“Someone ghostly,” I added.

“That was very likely your own papa gone out for his row,” replied Mama, now looking up at me. And then past me as her face shifted slightly, lifted a bit. “Ah, Mr. Cutting! Yes, of course you may join us.”

The man bowed a thanks to her, nodded at me, then settled in the chair next to mine.

“It could not have been Papa,” I pursued; “I’m almost certain I saw a woman’s face.”

“That is enough, Maisie,” Mama said firmly, and smiled at the headmaster. Then into the consequent silence she plunged, talking of picnics. I watched my mother’s animated hands outline the shape of the wicker basket needed for our party, banishing to air whatever visions I might have seen. Mr. Cutting listened with great attention, breaking in now and then to exclaim at Mama’s plans, until, well into his second cup of coffee, he prodded the conversation round to his own excursions “en plein air” into the sublime regions of the Alps. I looked round. The other breakfasters were mopping up their crumbs, twirling their napcloths into the shining rings, and rising—papers or fancywork in hand—to set forward into the day. Mama barely noticed as I departed, taking up my hat and wrap from their hook by the door.

My boots did not make a sound as I descended the wooden steps of the piazza, pulled into the damp. Now the fog hung loosely atop the trees, and I could feel the first heat of a sun struggling to pierce that vaporous buffer.