“Aye, and what should I tell her?”

“Why, whatever do you mean? Tell her that your mistress has passed during the night!”

Cook took one step toward me, then stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. She regarded me for a long instant, and then without a word, she turned and walked to Miss Grange’s writing table, where the bottles of her medicine sat upon a wooden tray. I watched as Cook drew forth the bottle from which I had poured out the tonic for Miss Grange last night, then held it up to the morning light now streaming through the window. Slowly, she shook its contents, tapping against the green glass sides as she swirled the bottle in the air, as if she considered something. I watched, vaguely disturbed but unsuspecting of what she did. Abruptly, she set the bottle down on the tray, unstoppered it, and, still without a word to me, poured a large draft of port into the bottle, nearly filling it to the brim.

“There,” she whispered to herself. “No one shall know.” And carefully, she replaced each bottle on the tray, wiping the lip of the one she had newly filled, and then she pushed the tray backward on the table so that it sat against the window, a pretty ornament of green and blue and crimson bottles in the light.

Cook turned around and once again regarded me. “Were you with her when she passed?” she asked with a quiet authority; and perhaps her inexplicable attention to the levels in the bottles, her air of familiarity with this sickroom, called forth the quiescent respect I then paid to the Grange House cook.

“Yes,” I answered.

“And did she go”—Cook hesitated—“gently?”

I nodded, remembering the joy upon Miss Grange’s face.

“Why do you smile?” Cook’s voice was unfamiliar to me, verging on a haughtiness I had never heard before.

I shook my head and smiled gently back at her, unwilling to disclose Miss Grange’s last moments to this woman.

But the woman would not be denied. Swiftly, she crossed the distance between us and stood over me, her hands on her hips. “Why do you smile?” she repeated.

I looked up into her face, which was disfigured now by an intentness bordering on mania—her dark blue eyes frightening me by their fixed gaze. “Why do you smile? Why do you continue smiling? What did she say before she passed?” Cook bent closer to me, and I shrank farther back into the chair.

“Nothing,” I answered, “nothing. She seemed glad when the end was come.”

“Did she speak of someone meeting her?” Cook’s voice had dropped to a monstrous whisper. I trembled.

“Yes,” I whispered back. “Yes, at the very end—” My words sprang forth now. “At the very end, she spoke of someone else in the room, one whom she expected.”