Though there was pleasure in her voice, the deep-sunk blue of her eyes regarded me with a touch of bewilderment. I supposed she saw what my mirror told: My cheeks now held the shape of a woman’s face, and beneath the dark brown eyes turned to welcome her lay the secret longings of my untried heart. I had caught Mama watching me furtively, as though she read a hidden chapter in my familiar face, and even Jessie—who had dressed and tended me since I was a girl—exploded forth from time to time despite herself, ripping out the seams of my bodices and commenting dryly about “welcome attentions.”

“Miss Grange?” I hesitated.

She recovered herself. “How greatly you resemble your father,” she replied, and drew her hand beneath my arm so we proceeded together into the hum of the bright gathering.

Miss Grange was something of an enigma for the summer guests. She did not own the hotel, yet she inspired a curious respect. When she did choose to come among us, she was greeted as a visiting dignitary, or even as a monarch long exiled from the proceedings of her own court. It is not to be thought that she was important in any pertinent way. Rather, her magnificence derived from the fact of her lineage. Hers was a family whose roots were among the first to stretch down into American soil. No one knew precisely her connection to the men who had built this House, but it was commonly assumed she was a distant and poor relation who had come here to live after the main branch of the family passed away. Thus, her romance derived from her situation: She was the last Grange remaining. The history of her family preceded her into the very rooms it had built and peopled and vanished from long before the summering plutocrats arrived at the fortunes that brought them here.

And among the younger guests, there were the whispered rumors of buried wealth, the half-uttered suggestions of a lost love, of a secret pact into which she had entered when she came into the House. Once, Papa told me that she had been an authoress, yet surely none of her stories could rival the stew pot simmering at the back of the guests’ imaginations. Thus was Miss Grange cast as a living character in the casual entertainment of city folk seeking simplicity under the sharp lines of a Maine sky. Simplicity, that is to say, inmixed with a good country intrigue.

“Here is Miss Grange,” I said, drawing her to where my parents conversed, and Mama and Papa turned round. Mama’s mouth opened into the vague and generous smile she always gave when her thoughts tended elsewhere, but Papa took Miss Grange’s hand in his, visibly startled.

“But—you are not well?”

Miss Grange stiffened, and, withdrawing her hand gently, she nodded but did not reply.