“Your eyes shine when you speak of it. I do believe you’re happy, Mary.”

“Oh, that cannot possibly be,” I said with a wry smile.

“Why shouldn’t it be? You ought to have every expectation of happiness.”

“I wasn’t born like you, Fanny. Or had it drummed out of me. Happiness was not my family’s creed.”

“Well, that’s over now. You have your school.”

“We have our school.”

I smiled and lay on the bed beside her. Without a word, she put her arm out to let me rest my head in the nook of her shoulder.

“You see?” she said. “This, here. This is our creed.”

Eliza and Everina didn’t share our enthusiasm for any of it. They hated the long days and hard work of teaching and keeping up the school. Eliza regained her senses over time, seemed more like herself, if a fragile version, but she pined for her little girl. We took turns writing letters to Bishop, imploring him to let her see Bess, if not surrender custody altogether. He never wrote back, but word came to us, through Ned, that he would never forget what Eliza had done to him, never forgive her. The daughter was in the care of wet nurses and maids, which was hardly reassuring.

As her daughter’s first birthday neared, in August, Eliza became more agitated, more desperate. She couldn’t focus, often didn’t finish her sentences, would walk to the window to watch any mother and small child in the street, following their every move.

One day I took delivery of a letter from Ned. In a final act of cruelty, Bishop could not even bring himself to deliver the news that little Bess had caught a fever and died. There were no details, not how long she’d suffered, whose arms she died in, if she’d called for her mother. Knew that her mother loved her. Eliza lay down on her bed and clutched a pillow to her chest. She stayed there for three days, wouldn’t eat, slept in fits. And then one morning she appeared at the breakfast table in a crisp dress, hair swept neatly back. She expressed no regret for her decision, but her eyes told me that she knew she had sacrificed her child to win her freedom. Her stoicism didn’t last. Everina was struggling with her responsibilities, and the two found common cause in their resistance to me.

“We must all live up to your standards, Mary. What is just in that?” Everina asked me.

“I seem to be the only one with standards. If you have something to contribute, Everina, by all means.”

“You’ve always had to have it your way, all our lives.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Because of you, and the scandal with Eliza, I will never find a husband.”

“Go then.”