They paused in the door of a large room, painted white. All around the walls were candelabra, large ones, small gilt fragile-looking ones, a pair covered with sea-shells. Chloe’s mouth fell open. There was a hideous, large candelabra designed to look like tree branches, and even one that must have been in the original nursery because it depicted Noah’s Ark with candles sprouting from several of the animals’ heads.

“Oh,” Charlotte laughed. “I completely forgot how odd this room must look. You see, I need light more than anything else. So we put up all the extra candelabra we had in the attic, and then we sent one of the footmen down to the Strand with instructions to buy anything he could find. And this was the result.”

Chloe looked around slowly. The lights had been affixed to the walls every foot or so, and each one had stark white candles in its holders.

“The footmen put in new candles every morning,” Charlotte continued. “I get hideously irritable when they burn down, because if one goes out it changes the light, and finally Mrs. Simpkin—our housekeeper—decided that the candles burn first here. They are changed every morning and then they go into other rooms, like the bedchambers. London is so dark with coal dust that I can work only until around eleven o’clock in the morning with natural light, and often not even then.”

Chloe nodded. She had never seen so many wax candles in one room. Her mother was no nip-cheese, as she said, but even so they used wax sparingly and tallow dips in all the bedrooms. She walked slowly into the room. Posed before a large set of windows was an easel. When she walked around and stood in front of it she was transfixed. The picture was a laughing version of the young woman, Lady Sophie York, whom she had met the night before at the theater. Sophie was so alive, as if she might dash off the canvas. She didn’t look at all dreamy or posed, like the portraits exhibited in the Royal Portrait Gallery each year.

“I brought it out,” Charlotte said, “so you could see my work. Ah, do you like it?” Chloe’s little face was like a barometer, Charlotte thought. You could see each expression register clearly. At the moment she looked appalled, hopefully not because of the painting.

Chloe turned her head quickly. Charlotte actually sounded a bit anxious! “It’s splendid,” she said stumblingly. “But … why would you want to paint me? She’s so dazzling, and I am quite ordinary.”