“He has an exquisite command of glamour, which I think will appeal to you.” Then Mr. Dunkirk turned back to Melody and the room grew dimmer. “May I detain you from dancing for a trifle longer?”

“Of course.” Melody followed him artlessly, so that it seemed he led only her to the dining hall, with Jane an unwanted straggler.

There, a combination of glamour and paint contrived to turn the hall into a nymph’s grove. Though yet incomplete, the illusion teazed the spectators with scents of wild-flowers and the spicy fragrance of ferns. Just out of sight, a brook babbled. Jane looked for the folds which evoked it, and gasped with wonder at their intricacy. Her perception of the physical room faded as she traced each fold in an effort to understand it.

Mr. Dunkirk and Melody whispered behind her. Of course, they could not see the effort which went into the art, and would consequently become bored with it more quickly. She shook herself, focusing once more on her surroundings.

A broad-chested man stood in front of her, watching her too intently. As soon as Jane focused on him, he broke his gaze, acting as if he had not been staring at her. Then a swirl of guests streamed between them and he vanished into the crowd.

Puzzled, Jane turned back to Mr. Dunkirk and Melody. “Did you see the gentleman standing there?”

“No.” Melody shook her head, curls bobbing around her cheeks. “What did he look like?”

Jane resisted the urge to pat her own hair, forced into curls with an iron. “Tall, and very broad of chest. His hair was chestnut and curled about his head like Gérard’s portrait of Jean-Baptiste Isabey.” She stopped speaking as Mr. Dunkirk gave a start of recognition.

“Why, Miss Ellsworth, you have seen the artist himself.”

“I wish Mr. Vincent had stayed so that I might compliment his work.”

“I am certain that the regard with which you viewed the glamural was ample compensation.” Mr. Dunkirk gestured to the other guests around them. “You see how few stop to pay heed.”

“That is because it is a ball, not a museum.” Melody wrinkled her nose and looked wistfully toward the ballroom.

Mr. Dunkirk bowed. “Then may I ask for a dance?”

“Of course.” Melody took his offered arm.

Before he led her away, he turned to Jane. “Miss Ellsworth, I trust you will also honour me this evening.”

Melody stiffened beside him, very slightly. Her eyes seemed to beg Jane not to dance. And how could she? How could she compete with her beautiful, charming sister? “Thank you, Mr. Dunkirk. I feel that I would like to remain here and admire the glamural for a while. I do not quite understand how he is reproducing the brook sound. It has not repeated yet.”

Mr. Dunkirk and Melody made their apologies for leaving her unaccompanied, but upon her assurances that she wished to study the folds and twists of glamour, they retreated to the ballroom. Jane moved slowly about the perimeter of the room, lost in her own thoughts. She paused again where the sound of the brook was loudest and began to look deeper, trying to understand how the glamourist had managed to make the sound continue without repetition. The fold was not tremendously long, as one might expect, but was rather thick and wound back on itself after a very short distance, surely no larger than a dinner platter. Jane put her hand on the sideboard to steady herself and looked deeper still. As she did she perceived that the sound of the brook was made not of one fold, but of several braided together. Each carried a part of the brook’s babble and each was of a slightly different length so that the various sounds changed their relation to one another as they spun through the cycle, thus creating the illusion of variation. Jane smiled at the artfulness of the technique and pulled her vision back to the room at large.