“No, my dear. I am in earnest. And I say to you, Maisie Thomas, that it is all nonsense. Think past, think further out than this house, those curtains, the trees. You might marry, or not, but nothing will alter this wordlessness, this longing.”

I watched her grow more and more agitated as she spoke, drowning my own unhappy confusion.

“Listen to me,” she continued. “I failed someone once, a young woman like you who wished, like you, past the bourne of her body, and who carried that longing like a child she could not set down.”

“I do not understand.”

“She was defined by her longing. She did not let her longing shape itself, delighting instead in a restless melancholy, an acuity of vision and of heart upon which she prided herself.”

“And what happened to her?”

“She was buried.”

“Buried?” My head jerked up, and I was reminded why I had come. “Miss Grange, I have seen Perdita Grange.”

Soon as the words fled my mouth, Miss Grange’s warm intensity dropped from her, the chill so sudden, I feared they had done her grievous harm. I started forward, alarmed by the change in her complexion, and as I reached to touch her, her gray face turned to meet mine.

“So …” She looked at me wearily. “You have read her name. Now at last you can begin her story.”

“Begin?” I stared at her. “But the pages of your diary have already told it.”

Now it was her turn to stare.

“Isn’t your love story the story of the grave?” I asked testily.

“No,” she whispered, slightly surprised. “Of course not.”

I nearly stamped my foot, so confused and unhappy was I. “But Miss Grange, if that was not the unwritten story, then why did you send me those pages at all?”

She reached forward a placating hand. “Maisie. Did they comfort you in the beginning?”

Tears threatened. I nodded.

“That was all I intended,” she said, “at first.”

“And then?”

Her hand clenched upon the chair and a spasm of some deep pain crossed her face. Carefully, she adjusted her weight. “And then I saw the love story might draw you … nearer.”

“Why?” I could barely breathe, knowing what she would say.

“Because, Maisie, once you had a sister.”

I nodded, the tears now spilling over onto my cheeks.

“And it is her unfinished story that now must be told.”

“Oh, stop this!” I cried, bolting from my chair and walking unseeing the length of the chamber, tears running freely down. “I cannot bear more!”

“The love story ended, Maisie,” she continued softly; indeed, she would not stop. “It was fully told. I loved your father. He chose”—her voice shook—“your mother. Perdita was born. And your father never knew she had lived. There,” she said, “there is the sad ending.” She fell silent.

I could not stop my weeping. I could not move toward her; neither could I speak.