“Their suspicions were not ungrounded. As Dr. Bates approached the house early one June evening, he regarded appreciatively the fine, hard beauty of the house, classical in its spare lines, though ample in its proportions, regretting once more that he had not been a more frequent visitor to the hearth of his old friend Rorie Grange—or more exactly, to the hearth of his widow. Women should not be too long without the steadying influence of a man, he reflected, and hobbling his horse, he thought uneasily what he meant to say to the daughters who had summoned him to their door. He had little knowledge of the two young women’s characters; however, he had hit upon a preliminary observation to soothe: Though the Widow Grange’s removal of herself and her belongings to the attic was singular, it was not entirely out of the ordinary, given the nature of her circumstances.

“‘When the female of the species undergoes the change in life,’ elaborated Dr. Bates shortly thereafter, settled before the Misses Grange, ‘she can drift free of her moral compass—and if she is allowed to fix her mind too long on one object, her inner guide may smudge, as when the bodily eye dwells too singly on one color and so cannot see the world but through the taint of that dominating hue.’

“The doctor spoke low and kindly, though he was, if it need be known, not a little embarrassed to be sharing so intimate a meditation on the delicate constitution of the female with that very same female’s own daughters. Indeed, there was nothing in the situation to put the poor man at ease. The room in which the conference was held, usually cheerful and warm, had been left to grow quite cold, the servants having fled the House, and the two young women before him too aggrieved by the behavior of their mother to tend to the trivial—what some might call the essential—tasks of sustaining a commonplace in life.

“Nonetheless, the man of science persevered, rubbing his hands together for a spot of warmth and observing to himself as he did so that he had been the only one to have spoken for some many minutes. The two women before him listened—the one upon the sofa directly across, the younger in a chair at a little remove from him and off to the side—neither one taking her eyes from his face, as if to capture every nuance, every slight vibration of small meaning left unsaid but heard in the pitch between his words. The effect being, as I have indicated, that the good doctor wished nothing so much there in the capacious sitting room of the great house as to be firmly ensconced before his own fire, his tattered ottoman beneath his slippered feet, with the glory of distance and a good brandy and soda to put between him and these transfixed girls.