‘Give me something I can sell,’ he says, bluntly, when he reaches the door. ‘Or resign yourself to a lifetime of painting old men.’

His words linger in the charged silence. Anna watches him disappear, wishing she, too, could be excused. She stays rooted to her chair, afraid Catharina will snap at her if she dares rise. The artist has turned her head resolutely towards the window, her gaze fixed outside as if the answers she seeks lie somewhere beyond the wet woodland glimpsed through the glass. A girl in a white cap and apron appears at the table to clear away the breakfast things. This must be the young servant Susanna mentioned last night – Lotte. The girl peers curiously at Anna as she piles the baskets and silverware together and sweeps up the crumbs. Catharina ignores her as well as Anna, seeming to prefer her own thoughts to any comfort or comment they might offer. Shooting Anna one last glance, Lotte vanishes into the corridor. In her absence, Anna’s thoughts grow louder, the doubts circling like noisy crows inside her head. Should she have defended Catharina against Crispijn’s attacks? What are the protocols? To whom does her loyalty lie – the man who employed her or the mistress she now serves? What if they are both displeased and order her gone? Where will she go?

Despair creeps under her skin and she shivers. Outside, it has begun at last to snow.

From the sitting room window, Anna watches the flakes drift, hoping for softness, for pincushion hills and trees fringed like ladies’ parasols. What sluices down from the sky is a sleeting rain that litters the drive with dirty white pellets. Catharina sits in a velvet chair beside the fire, reading a translation of Seneca’s Philologus and taking furious notes for a treatise she plans to write on the education of modern women. The argument with her brother has put her in a dark mood. She refuses Anna’s offer to scribe.

‘Just stay within shouting distance,’ she snaps when Anna works up the courage to offer. ‘I will send for you if I require your services.’