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Chapters (36)
  1. Title Page
  2. Epigraph
  3. VOLUME I
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. VOLUME II
  15. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  22. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  23. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. VOLUME III
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. AFTERWORD
  34. PRAISE FOR Grange House
  35. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  36. Copyright Page

She looked at me bleakly for a moment. “I do so want your happiness, Maisie.”

“I know, Mama.” I smiled, my voice catching. “Let us go down.”

And as we walked together down the stairs, the House—my house—drew close around. My happiness? Where was that to be found?

VOLUME III

VOLUME III

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The following morning, I awoke determined to seek out Perdita’s hidden grave on my own, to see if it might speak to me any further. For something had happened here that even the Author did not know. I could not idle any longer. Jonathan was expected within one week’s time to fetch Mama and myself back to Brooklyn, where—I could see the ending.

I stood upon the piazza in the great clarity of a blue day and spied Mama in a group of ladies under the canopy on the lawn, and I ventured near enough only to be hailed. For I did not wish to stop in my present mood, and I waved back and smiled into the white-hatted foursome. As I passed by, I heard Mrs. Hunnowell resume reading aloud from the worn House copy of Evelina, then saw Mama bend her head again over her work, Miss Burney’s story following me into the fields toward the lawn tennis. The net had grown tattered by the season’s wear and by the ill usage of the boys. Stuck through the holes of the netting were various treasures of the fields—bunches of grasses, feathers, even the abandoned shell of an enormous crab. The court and its decorated net called to mind the ravages of a midsummer’s eve party after the sun rises on what the moon blinked over. I left the court behind and wandered into the woods behind the lawn, half-conscious of the direction my feet took, walking into the woods’ dark smells—pine and the dank, damp earth.

I had only a dim sense of how to find that hidden grave again. I tried to recall how Miss Grange had set us upon our path that afternoon last summer, but I could not remember much, save that we had plunged directly into the woods from the back of the House and seemed to walk a path that took the same route as the old road to Middle Haven. When we returned, I remembered, however, we had walked much more directly, straight back to Grange House, as if the grave lay on a compass point stiff-needled by the roof.