“Yes,” he said simply. “She had published several stories that attracted much attention. Even Mrs. Stowe had corresponded with her, and then the great Thomas Higginson came to see her himself and took away her manuscript with him.”

“And then what happened?”

Papa seemed not to have heard.

“Papa, where is that book now?”

“It was never published,” he answered.

“But why?”

“Because—” He caught himself. “Why? Why, I haven’t any idea.” He ran out the oars, their double splash heralding an ending. “But you see she need not be considered sorrowfully,” he finished.

“Nonetheless, you should not like me to be like her?” I flashed out hotly.

Again he fixed me, and this time I thought he meant to speak true, but there was something in my face too eager, perhaps, too stirred, for he dropped his gaze from mine and answered strangely, “You must marry, Maisie.”

“Surely, Papa, one need not marry as an anodyne to sorrow!” I was provoked indeed.

He smiled faintly. “My dear, marriage puts solid ground beneath one’s feet: ground, walls, rooms. You must have a house, my girl. A place. You cannot have a history without a place.”

“History, Papa!”

“Yes, Maisie. History is a place.” The boat swung round and the roofline of Grange House appeared. “A place one returns to, again and again.”

I looked at the black edge of the House behind Papa’s head, and I was suddenly and inexplicably melancholy.

“You are most contradictory this evening, Papa. I thought I was not to train my sights on wishes set by others.”

Now he was impatient with me.

“No one, especially a woman, can build a life in open air. There must be forms. There must be vases. Wish all you might, your visions will shrivel and die if you have no place in which to set them. The most beautiful bloom is that which has been forced upward through a narrow casing.”

I crossed my arms. “No one, I think, Papa, ever said such a thing to you.”

“It was entirely different for me.”

“Why was it?”

“You cannot understand,” he answered me swiftly.

“No,” I replied bitterly for the second time that day. “I do not.”

He did not speak further, but busied himself by bringing the rowboat briskly into the pier in several clean strokes, shipping the oars as we drew alongside the wooden pier, blackened by twilight and the thick, silent sea.

But, I reflected, walking back up the lawn beside my father and looking directly into the great white frame of Grange House, stern and stark in the soft dusk, Miss Grange does have a place. I raised my eyes to her window. And she had never married. A stab of irritation rose up once more. Now indeed I wished I had not shied from reading the name upon that stone.

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN