“She put a hand upon his arm. ‘I knew it. I have felt it in my dreams.’

“‘What dreams?’ he asked wearily.

“She drew close to him and lightly placed her hands on his cheeks. He stiffened. ‘Like that,’ she said, withdrawing. ‘Right upon waking, there comes the briefest touch of her hands on either side of my face, as though she wished my attention somewhere, as though she made ready to leave.’ Susannah stared at him. ‘I am frightened, Dr. Bates. I am frightened of what is to come.’

“The old man could not find voice for a moment.

“‘Help her to rest, Miss Grange,’ he managed at last. ’I will return again tomorrow.’ And with that, he made quickly for the door. But the door opened with his hand upon the handle and there upon the threshold Dr. Bates was met with the handsome face and steady form of a stranger.

“‘Good Lord, man!’ Dr. Bates cried, his heart pounding uncomfortably fast.

“‘This is our cousin, Dr. Bates,’ Susannah said at the doctor’s side.

‘He came to us just two weeks ago.’ And turning to gaze at her, the doctor noted the delicate flush that had stolen upward into the woman’s pale face.

“‘How do you do, sir,’ said the man, offering his hand.

“Dr. Bates turned back to face him. ‘Well, thank you,’ he stammered, noting the steady warmth of the hand he shook. Then he bid them both a good night and sought the outer door.”

Miss Grange’s boot scraped against the brass fender before the fireplace as she pushed up to shift her position within the chair. I reached forward to help her and saw with a start that tears had fallen upon her cheek.

“Could you ever imagine a mother such as that, Maisie Thomas?”

The question caught me off guard; I had been flush with the unexpected vision of that stranger. “Miss Grange?”

But she continued on again without further comment.

“Now, Dr. Bates was a Harvard College man, an educated man of reason, and though his reason was wed to a strong belief in the sublime, he was troubled not a little as he pulled the door closed behind him on that dark house, a house of death. He had thought the widow’s mind merely to have slipped loose its mooring on the truth, and yet the appearance of the man gave her story a strange kind of dreadful credence.

“And as he caught up his pony’s reins and mounted, the phrase Nell Grange had recited swum up again onto the surface of his mind: ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.’ Though she had hideously twisted its meaning, he was struck by the coincidence of hearing his own pet phrase upon the lips of the young woman. For though it was unorthodox, this was the phrase the doctor himself had most often used to imagine the unimaginable, especially considering the female sex, plucking this doctrine from its proper place and making of it a gentle reminder of the female body—a a promise, as it were, from God. Housed within a woman, the doctor thought, were rooms of undisclosed shapes and sizes, and a woman may live a life and never open but two or three, and live within them quite happily. But there were those who twisted and turned within the windy stairwells of their selves, opening doors to rooms and peering in upon possible worlds unmatched in the exterior.