Jane feared that was true, though not for the reasons put forward by her mother. She had a vision of Melody becoming an invalid like Mrs. Ellsworth, for the purpose of the attention it brought to her. She wondered if that was how her mother’s case had begun, and if Mrs. Ellsworth knew any longer what her real aches were and which were imagined. Melody’s moans of pain had seemed genuine enough. Still, Jane reassured her mother on Melody’s general good health as best she could and then asked if she should continue reading Sidonia the Sorceress.

“Oh no! I should not be able to concentrate without knowing who is belowstairs. Pray, do go and see who has come. If it is a person of consequence, I should pay my respects.”

Jane could have told her mother that if it had been a person of consequence, Nancy would have brought his or her card up straightaway, but she knew that to argue would only prolong the moment when she went to quiet her mother’s unease. “Of course. I will be happy to check for you.”

Setting the book aside once more, Jane made her way downstairs. She paused by the parlour door, struck by the bouts of laughter within. Jane cracked the door, peering in at a scene which astounded her.

Melody was seated on the couch by Captain Livingston, who must have been the recent arrival. They faced Mr. Vincent, who was conjuring small vignettes on the tea table before them. Jane could barely make out the illusion from where she was, so she crept farther into the room in order to see better. Mindful of Mr. Vincent’s feelings, she endeavored not to watch the folds he manipulated, but to focus on the small manikins. Even so, she marveled at his skill in managing the minuscule folds needed to create the illusion. The scenery, he had tied off; but beyond that, she was unwilling to look. She would try to enjoy the scene for what it was.

He had conjured a setting of trees which served as a sort of proscenium arch. Their jeweled leaves glowed in the air with the idealized beauty of stained glass. The figures were cunning silhouettes, without color, like living shadows made from the fabric of glamour. A traveler, after a number of obstacles, approached a bridge, which was in the process of being destroyed by a workman with a pickax. Jane at once recognized it as the French shadow-play The Broken Bridge. The traveler tried to get the workman to tell him how to cross the river, and after receiving a series of increasingly rude answers, he found a boat and crossed the river.

Though it was a crude story and she knew how it ended, when the traveler approached the workman from behind and kicked him into the river, Jane laughed as heartily as the others.

Mr. Vincent dropped the folds he was holding and, with his breath still somewhat quickened from the shadow-play, rose to his feet. Captain Livingston sprang to his feet an instant after, ever the gallant, but Melody stayed seated, her face subsiding into a mask of bland pleasure.