“Oh! Do not apologize! Not to me. Oh, Jane. I thought of nothing this past week but of how I was wronged. But then—la! you will think it so silly!—then I was in the drawing room and was caught by one of your paintings. The one of me at Lyme Regis, do you remember? I cannot tell you what it was that I saw there, but it reminded me how you have always treated me with such devotion, and I realized that all my anger at you was misplaced, because I knew. I must have known that Hen—Captain Livingston was engaged to Miss FitzCameron, and yet I was too foolish to admit it.” She stopped and looked at the handkerchief in her lap, wringing it into a tight cord. “So I have come, though I have no right, to beg your forgiveness for being selfish and awful and—”

She got no further, for Jane flew across the room and hugged her sister, weeping with her. We shall leave them there as they exchange many heartfelt words, intermingled with tears and laughter.

That afternoon, Jane let Melody coax her down to the drawing room. Though it was not as easy as before, the old routine gave her enough measure of comfort that after dinner, when her father said, “Jane, will you favour us with some music?” she was willing to comply.

Rising from her seat by the fire, Jane said, “What would you have, Papa?”

From the sofa, her mother said, “Something cheerful. None of these newfangled songs of doom and gloom. A nice gavotte or a rondo would suit. There has been entirely too much moping, if you ask me, which of course none of you have, and yet, I will tell you that it is not good for you to be so much absorbed with yourself. You must think of others and not dwell so much on past injuries.”

Melody and Jane exchanged glances at this sudden reversal of their mother’s opinions. Melody hid a smile behind the fringe she was making. “Play what you like, Jane.”

The keyboard felt strange under her fingers. Had only a week passed since she had last played? It seemed like a lifetime. Jane began by sketching idle notes upon the keys, accustoming herself to music once more. She pulled glamour out to match the notes she played, but the dark purples and twilight colours gave too large a hint of the turmoil still buried in her heart.

Of all the things she did not understand, she did not know why Mr. Vincent had left. It gnawed at her, and the uncertainties shewed in her art.

Mindful of her mother’s request for something cheerful, Jane began Beethoven’s latest sonata. The ache in her breast played underneath the happy refrain. Jane let her feelings bleed out under the cover of this joyous song and into the glamour, so that as the colours frolicked over the pianoforte, a yearning lurked between them.

The sound of a carriage rolled up the sweep.