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momentary stillness. “My daughter, Miss Hurst, as you have probably guessed, has set her heart on having you with her when we go back to Winterwood. I gather that you are contemplating leaving Venice almost immediately, so that’s why we sent for you at once. Naturally my wife would like to ask you some questions about your background and so on.”
    “I shall want to know a great deal,” said Charlotte Meryon with only slightly concealed suspicion and hostility.
    “Then ask her, Mamma, and she’ll tell you,” Flora said. She was very pert and confident now. Those desolate airs this morning had been merely an act. “I couldn’t eat any luncheon, Miss Hurst, and I cried for two hours. Then I had a fainting turn, so Mamma agreed to send for you. Didn’t you, Mamma? I explained how awful your cousin had been to you,” she added. “And it isn’t true that I’m a tyrant. Edward is speaking lies.”
    “Flora! As you can see, Miss Hurst, this child is completely out of hand. The doctors said she was not to be thwarted, so this is what happens.” Charlotte was pretending, not successfully, to be tolerant toward her crippled daughter. Lavinia could feel the dislike. For the first time she felt a little sympathy toward Flora’s extravagances about not being loved. They seemed to have a basis of truth.
    All the same, interest in the Meryon family couldn’t quell her indignation about the high-handed manner in which they seemed to be arranging her own future. It wasn’t only indignation she felt. Apprehension, too. Good sense told her to turn and walk out of this room immediately. She knew by the pull of her eyes to that watchful face by the window that if she allowed herself to be cajoled or bribed into working for these people she would spend too much time listening for his voice or his footsteps. She knew the impetuousness of her nature all too well. Indulging in a strong attraction for a married man was no way to start a new life. She must travel back to England with the elderly Monks and forget this brief madness.
    In any case, why should Charlotte Meryon assume, as she was doing, that everyone was so willing to obey her commands?
    “I will be frank with you, Miss Hurst, and tell you that only dire circumstances would bring me to engage a complete stranger like yourself even if you can produce all the necessary references. But we have had one calamity after another. Haven’t we, Daniel?” Her large eyes, curiously pale, like lakes of shining colorless water, sought her husband’s. “I have an invalid aunt to be got to England. There is my daughter, a helpless cripple, and I myself am far from strong.” Her hand fluttered over the table beside the couch on which there was an array of bottles. “I am subject, on the least exertion, to prostrating headaches. So we are a melancholy lot of invalids and in urgent need of help. It seems that Flora—”
    Lavinia could listen to no more.
    “I think you are under a misapprehension, Mrs. Meryon. I don’t accept employment with this impulsiveness any more than you offer it. Besides, I am not at all the kind of person you require. I agree with you that your daughter is a little overexcitable, and even though she is an invalid I hardly think it necessary to humor her to this extent. She has merely had a passing whim. She will forget it”
    “Miss Hurst!” Flora exclaimed, her eyes wide with outrage. “How can you be such a traitor?”
    “We said goodbye this morning, Flora. Don’t you remember?”
    “But I’m saving you from your horrid cousin.”
    “You’re thinking entirely of yourself,” Lavinia said. “You haven’t deceived me in the least” She faced Charlotte Meryon again, noticing that the pale perfect face wore a look of displeasure, and also some surprise. She obviously had not been told that Lavinia had none of the humility or meekness to be expected from someone in her situation.
    “My arrangements have been made for traveling back to England,