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“Who is Madame Levasseur?” Rosalind asked.

“My modiste, and the only sensible Frenchwoman in London.” Augusta buttered a piece of toast with great composure. “Which is to say, the only one who does not pretend a gown costs twice what it does. She is to look at you, and we are to order you a quantity of things.”

“A quantity of things?”

“You are not to argue with me about it, for I have decided, and I am older than you and harder to move.”

Rosalind set down her cup, a knot tightening in her stomach.

“Aunt,” she said carefully, “I have gowns.”

“You have two gowns and a half. The gray has been turned so often it has forgotten which side was meant to face the world, and the other is a good color gone tired.”

“And the half?” Rosalind asked, though she suspected she knew.

“The half is the one you are wearing, which was one of your stepmother’s cast-offs let down for you, and looks it.” Augusta said this without heat, and somehow that left no edge for an argument to catch on. “I have eyes, Rosalind. I have had them a long while.”

“It is a great expense.”

“It is my expense, and I am rich enough to bear it and stubborn enough to want to. You may thank me once, if you must.” She reached for the marmalade. “After that, neither of us shall mention it again, for gratitude is tiresome at the breakfast table, and I have a low tolerance for it before noon.”

“I would be glad to be of some use to you while I am here,” she said instead.

“Rosalind.” Augusta set her cup into its saucer with a small, precise click. “My housekeeper keeps my books, and if she learned she had been replaced by a guest before she had finished her breakfast, I should have her notice by dinner.”

When the clock struck the half-hour, Augusta’s gaze went to the chimney-piece, where a miniature stood in a worn gilt frame no larger than a playing-card. She rose and took it up.

“This came up with me,” she said. “I do not travel without it. Foolish, at my age, to be unable to sleep in a house that has not got it on the mantel, but there it is.”

“Who is she?” Rosalind asked, coming to stand at her aunt’s shoulder.

“Your mother. Cecily.” Augusta turned the miniature in her fingers, and the dryness went very quiet in her voice. “She would have been about your age here, perhaps a year younger. The painter complained that she would not sit still.” A smile touched her mouth. “She told him she had never sat still in her life and did not mean to begin for a man with a brush.”

A young woman looked out of the little frame, dark-haired and laughing-eyed, caught half-turned as though someone had spoken her name and she had looked round to answer it. Her mother, in Rosalind’s remembering, was a quiet figure, a hand on a fevered forehead, a voice gone thin at the last. Where had this bright, laughing girl been?

“I do not remember her so,” she murmured.

“No, you would not, for you had her at the end, and the end was not like her.” Augusta’s thumb moved once across the worn gilt, as if to be sure of it, and her gaze went somewhere far beyond the room. “She had this same trick of yours, the making of herself useful and the asking for nothing. I used to want to shake her for it.”

She was quiet for a long moment before she spoke again. “She played, you know. The pianoforte.”

“I remember,” Rosalind said, softly.

“Badly, I will not pretend otherwise, for she had no more patience for scales than she had for sitting still. But she played constantly, and with her whole heart, and there was music in whatever room she was in.” Augusta’s eyes stayed on some far-off place. “The house was a great deal quieter after, and I have often thought the quiet was the truest measure of the loss. Not the black gloves. The quiet.”

For a moment the room was very still, and Rosalind’s throat ached. There was grief in her aunt’s voice, and something beneath it she could not name.

“Aunt,” she began.

“Well.” Augusta set the miniature back on the mantel, exactly where it had stood, and the dryness returned to her. “She is keeping an eye on us from there, and she would tell me I am being mournful before breakfast, which is a worse fault than gratitude.” She straightened a candlestick that did not need straightening. “Madame Levasseur at eleven, remember. Wear the gray, for it will spare her feelings to start from the worst. And do not be surprised if Charlotte Danforth descends upon us this afternoon — I told her mother I had brought home a niece, and Charlotte has never once waited to be brought a thing she could go and fetch.” Then she added, with the smallest gleam, “And you may have the green when it comes, whatever you say. Cecily was always best in green, and I have a notion you will be too.”

She went out to give her orders, and Rosalind stood a moment longer before the little painted face. Warmth had settled in her chest, and she did not trust it. But oh, how I should like to.

* * *

Madame Levasseur came and went and left a great deal of pinned muslin behind her, and at half past two Charlotte Danforth was announced.

Rosalind had time only to set down the holly she had been sorting before the drawing-room door opened, and a young woman came in ahead of the footman.