But Lady Cosgrove held her hand fast. “An American,” she said in a tone that made certain allowances. “Pray, what was your name again?”

Maggie swallowed. “Maggie Chamberlin, ma’am,” she answered.

“You’re very far from home, my dear.”

With anyone else, Maggie might have made a flippant reply of some sort, the fact of distance being such an obvious one, but she liked Lady Cosgrove, sensed that she was a gentle and compassionate person. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. If there’d been more time, she might have told her ladyship the whole long story of how she’d come to be in Australia. She felt that warm toward the woman, but there were others, pressing in behind her. “I don’t suppose it’s any farther than England, though.”

Lady Cosgrove smiled at this and released Maggie’s hand. “We’ll speak again, my dear, after you’ve had your bath and something to eat.”

Maggie nodded, already wondering how she was going to explain to this kindly woman about her appointment in George Street with one Reeve McKenna, and hurried after Tansy.

Over the great double doors, the words GIRLS’ FRIENDLY SOCIETY had been carefully scripted, and since Tansy stepped over the threshold without bothering to knock, Maggie followed after her.

Austere-looking maids awaited in the sprawling entryway, their arms stacked with towels and bars of cheap yellow soap.

Still following Tansy’s lead, Maggie took two towels and a bar of soap and then mounted the sweeping stairway to the second floor. There, in the first chamber on the right, which looked big enough to serve as a ballroom, hip baths awaited, each tub curtained on three sides for a semblance of privacy.

“Be sure you wash your ’air, now,” one of the maids announced to everyone in general, her chapped red hands clasped in front of her in an authoritive fashion. “And if you got bugs, you’re to say so. Her ladyship don’t want you givin’ lice to the fine families of Sydney.”

Bugs. Maggie was roundly insulted, but she held her tongue and stepped into one of the cloth cubicles in the second row. There, she set down her carpetbag, towel, and soap, and began to undress. The prospect of a bath was so appealing that she could think of nothing else, not even her appointment in George Street or the fact that Philip Briggs had surely played her false.

By the time she’d thoroughly scrubbed herself, climbed out of the tub, and toweled her hair, Maggie’s stomach was rumbling with hunger. Last night’s supper, taken aboard the ship, seemed as far in the past as Noah’s flood.