A pause. “I have.”

“What do you know of her character in everyday life?”

“You believe me better acquainted with her than I am. I’ve seen her most often from a distance, with her onstage and me in the audience. I’m afraid we’ve only had one private conversation in all that time.”

“Does it seem . . . odd to you that she’s here? In an asylum?”

His mouth puckered as he considered his roundabout answer. “I believe it’s an unnatural place for any living being, if you ask me.”

Mitchell blew out a breath. The man could hedge Queen Victoria’s entire garden with more to spare. “Let me be direct. Has she done or said anything in your presence to indicate she might be mad?”

The man rubbed two fingers together, watching Mitchell. “What do you believe, Dr. Turner?”

His jaw flinched. “I was given to doubts. Yet what I saw yesterday . . .”

“She is a magnificent pianist, is she not?”

“Indeed. But then the way she banged about on the instrument, as if having fits of some kind.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve no doubt she is who she says, but perhaps also . . .”

Harford’s expression softened. “Dr. Turner, you are no stranger to grief. To the up-and-down intensity of coming to grips with an unexpected loss. One can see it etched into the very planes of your face.”

He looked down at his hands, the lined knuckles.

“I had the unfortunate role of informing her yesterday of a loss she knew nothing about, and it was quite a blow.”

Mitchell let out a breath, the spinning world recentering again. “So then she isn’t mad.”

That little Harford man sat straighter, his long mustache and pointed little beard twitching. “I don’t believe in labels, Dr. Turner. Boxes were never designed to hold people—they simply aren’t the correct shape.” He tilted his head to the side, studying Mitchell in a most unnerving way. “I suppose this is a requirement you have for pursuing her hand, yes? That she be considered sane in the eyes of the medical community?”

Mitchell gripped the chair, fighting his thoughts. Erasing the evidence of them from his face. “I never claimed—”

“Do not cheapen your affection, Dr. Mitchell Turner. Admit it plainly, and I shall have a great deal more respect for you.”

He firmed his jaw. “I cannot outwardly claim any such interest—especially while she is a patient at Hurstwell and I am a physician.”

Harford’s gaze was steady. “You categorize almost as badly as your superintendent does. Boxes, boxes, everyone in boxes. This one a blue gown, this one in green.”

“Those are a simple visual way to track who belongs where, and what their condition is. Green for epileptic, purple for chronic, blue for acute, and so forth. We are simply labeling facts, sir.”