Mathinna felt a familiar dread in the pit of her stomach. “What does she want with me?” she asked.

Mrs. Crain gave Mathinna a curt smile. “It is not your place to ask.”

When she left the room, Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You know how Jane likes to show you off. To take credit for civilizing you.”

Sarah helped Mathinna dress and escorted her downstairs.

“Ah! Here she is.” Lady Franklin turned to a thin, stooped man in a black wool coat standing beside her. “What do you think?”

He cocked his head at Mathinna. “Extraordinary eyes, you’re quite right,” he said. “And the dress is splendid against that dark skin.”

“Did I mention she’s the daughter of a chieftain?”

“You did indeed.”

“Mathinna,” Lady Franklin said, “this is Mr. Bock. I have commissioned him to create your portrait. For the purposes of science as well as art. Scientific research, as you may know, is a keen interest of mine,” she told Mr. Bock.

“One gathers as much,” he said, looking around at the taxidermied menagerie.

“I think people will be much interested in seeing this remnant of a native population that is about to disappear from the face of the earth,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“Ah, well . . .” The tips of Mr. Bock’s ears reddened slightly, and he slid his eyes toward Mathinna. She looked behind her to see if he meant to communicate with someone else, but no one was there.

Oh. He was embarrassed on her behalf.

She thought she had become inured to the way Lady Franklin spoke about her in her presence as if she had no feelings or didn’t comprehend what she was saying. But Mr. Bock’s acknowledgment of it made her realize how insulting it was.

Every afternoon for a week, Mathinna sat for hours in front of Mr. Bock’s easel in the least-used drawing room. He was quiet for long periods of time, speaking only to admonish her not to fidget or look away, to sit up straight, lay hands in her lap. Sarah told her it was rumored that Mr. Bock was a famous painter in England before he was sentenced to transport for stealing drugs. The fact that he might be an ex-convict made him somehow less intimidating.

Each day, when Mr. Bock dismissed her, Mathinna left the room without looking at the painting in progress. She’d seen the framed pictures on the walls in Lady Franklin’s quarters—natives with exaggerated features, bulbous noses, and saucer eyes. She was afraid of how she might appear on Mr. Bock’s easel.

Late on Friday afternoon, he announced that he was finished. He called for Lady Franklin to take a look. Scrutinizing the portrait, she cocked her head. Nodding slowly, she said, “Well done, Mr. Bock. You’ve managed to convey her mischievousness. And that woolly hair. What do you think, Mathinna? Doesn’t it look like you?”

Mathinna slid off her chair and walked slowly to the easel. The girl in the portrait did resemble her. She gazed directly at the viewer with large, blackish brown eyes, her hands folded in her lap, bare feet crossed, lips turned slightly upward. But she didn’t look mischievous. She seemed melancholy. She had an air of preoccupation, as if she were waiting for something, or someone, beyond the canvas.