“Okay,” Sybil continues, “Lockwood left the family to go to sea right after Nathaniel was born, and Elizabeth encouraged him to go. That’s nothing I made up, that’s fact, also from Myles, and it would make sense for her to encourage him. Maybe she even suggested it. She might have been a good teacher in the art of dissembling, but I don’t think the straight-from-the-shoulder sailor boy would have been an apt pupil. Having him around the house all the time would have been too risky, and too great a strain on them both. And there might have been this, too: Elizabeth was afraid of her emotions. Lockwood wasn’t like his father, a steam-bent oak rib, but young and malleable. She might have taught him tenderness, which I don’t think she got from Capitano Furioso until he was older and mellowed, and then it was probably a kind of patriarchal, condescending tenderness. Lockwood went to sea but came back, from time to time, and during those returns, when his father was away, assignations were arranged. I suppose Elizabeth would have been good at arranging them. I suppose she would have been good at anything having to do with concealment and secrecy, the girl with black blood who had lived all her life in a white world and maybe sometimes convinced herself that Pardon’s blood was the only blood in her. There would have been these assignations, like I said, and Eliot came along and then my grandfather, and then it stopped after him. Cyrus did not have his five children, but did have his three sons, and maybe he was satisfied with that. I really don’t know if things stopped between Elizabeth and Lockwood, or if it was only the bearing of children that stopped, either because nature made it so or because she started using whatever birth control there was for a woman at that time. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the reason a handsome man like Lockwood never found a girl was because he wasn’t looking. Elizabeth captured him entirely. I’m not sure how much she allowed herself to feel for him, but she must have welcomed the tenderness, the not being plowed and harrowed and seeded, but loved. In time, she would have needed it as much as he needed her, and so maybe things did continue after it was no longer necessary for them to continue, and the only thing that stopped was more children. But I just don’t know. You see, there’s this—she did have an operation when she was about forty, and that’s another fact. She mentioned, I mean alluded to, it, in a letter she wrote to Gertrude Williams. It’s dated June 6, 1901—” (Sybil reads aloud.) “ ‘My dearest Gertrude, I am delighted to tell you that the procedure went smoothly and painlessly and without any complications. Dr. Simms was most understanding and kind and assures me that he will exercise the utmost discretion. I cannot thank you enough, my dear, dear friend, for recommending him to me (or was it me to him?). I feel a bit melancholy. This has been so difficult for me, and without you it would have been impossible. Dr. Matthews has looked in on me because I had a slight fever yesterday, but he tells me I’ll be fine soon and back to Mingulay for the summer. He has been in contact with Dr. Simms, who told him he had performed a hysterectomy. How I wish that had not been necessary. Only a few years ago, it would not have been. I am so looking forward to seeing you at North Haven!…’ What does that sound like to you?”