“Ah,” said Mama, and sipped again at her tea, her eyes set upon the middle distance of the room behind me.

“Two years ago, I should have welcomed the news,” she mused aloud.

“Mama!”

She looked up and saw the tears in my eyes. “Why, Maisie, I am sorry.”

“But now?” I asked crossly.

“Now?”

“Now you do not welcome the news?”

She shook her head sadly. “Now it seems that yet another part of him has also died.”

“Another part of whom?” I asked, shaken.

“Why, of Papa, of course.” She replaced the butter knife upon the dish.

“Mama?”

The toast stopped halfway to her lips, and she regarded me an instant. “Do not mistake me for an utter fool,” she said quite low, and then returned to the toast upon her plate.

I sat silent in the glare of this new light. She gave me an odd pinched look as she swept the crumbs from off the cloth into her cupped hand and then rose to throw them in the dying fire. “Ah, and here is Mr. Cutting!”

I would not have been surprised if she had uttered “to save us” beneath her breath, for now I distinctly saw she was uneasy, incapable of sitting down again once she had ordered more hot coffee for the latecomer, standing at the top of the kitchen stairs and ringing the bell upon the chain there. Ringing it long after there was any doubt it had been heard.

“Mama?” I repeated softly. She turned round. “Shall we walk out?”

With a swift glance at Mr. Cutting, who was thrust deep into the pages of his journal, she looked at me, and this time her eyes did rest upon me for a touch longer than an instant before they shifted by. A seagull’s sharp-voiced toy toy toy passed overhead.

“There is something we must speak of, Maisie.” She was sharp, although reluctant, almost fearful.

I rose and went to stand by her.

But she could not meet my gaze, indeed could not keep from glancing back to see what Mr. Cutting did, as if the world’s answers lay within that bald dome; within or nearby, for she set her eyes upon the place just slightly to the left of his seated figure.

“Just look at that Lady Rose, will you please?” Her gaze fastened upon the vine climbing up one of the verandah columns, and through force of habit, I looked where she looked; indeed there was a new rose bursting into bloom.

“Yes, Mama.” I did not shift position.

“So late in the year.” She grew thoughtful.

Irritated, I touched her arm to bring her gaze back round. “Mama”—I broke my morning resolution and cast off the anchor—“Miss Grange wished that I—”

“Miss Grange wished!” she repeated sharply, turning right round so her words might be heard in the full breadth of the room. “Not only did you disobey me—”

“Disobey!”

“Yes, Maisie. You never came down.”