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fine, upstanding, and altogether considerable gentleman, of whom, I believe, Uncle Vaughan thinks highly; and Aunt Edwina has, I believe, never said a censorious word, in my hearing at least. And we know that Mother respects him.”
    Octavia, smiling sadly, applied herself to the patchwork toy in her lap, and did not reply for some strained moments. She then said, without raising her tremulous brown gaze to Malvinia’s: “I fear, Malvinia, that all this chatter of Mr. Rumford—and Rumford Hall—and this and that—is, at best, premature. And may even be,” she said in a quavering voice, “finally quite irrelevant.”
    â€œOctavia!” Malvinia breathed. “What are you saying?”
    â€œOctavia—is it so?” Constance Philippa asked.
    Bravely the young woman said: “I fear—I fear he may be, after all, interested in someone else: and Mother’s fancies, and, I am ashamed to say, my own, may be quite insubstantial.”
    â€œSomeone else!—ah, he does not dare!—not after things have so advanced, and he and Grandfather had, I thought, come to some sort of agreement with each other,” Malvinia said heatedly. “Of course, I do not know that any such conversation took place, but Mr. Rumford has behaved in so conspicuous a way. . . . Who might the other girl be?”
    â€œPerhaps it is Delphine,” Constance Philippa said dryly. “No, more likely Felicity Broome, with her gossamer veil. Only fancy, she pretended to be chilled, and faint-headed, in this heat!”
    â€œI do not know the identity of the other girl,” Octavia said. “It is naught but a rumor, out of Philadelphia. Indeed, it was Felicity who whispered it in my ear with, I thought, an expression of such gleeful cruelty, I felt my heart pierced; and wanted nothing more than to be carried back home, to my bedchamber, and my bed.”
    â€œOctavia, I am certain you are mistaken,” Constance Philippa said, with some attempt at chastisement, “for, you must remember, Mr. Rumford is a deeply religious man, and the recent death of his wife—but some six or seven years ago, I believe?—must weigh very heavily upon him. It is common knowledge that he was ordained a Lutheran minister; his nature is hardly lightsome and fickle.”
    â€œThat is true, I suppose,” Octavia said slowly. “Mr. Rumford is uncommonly deep.”
    â€œThe fact that he remains in mourning for his wife,” Malvinia said, “can only be encouraging to you, for it suggests the gravity with which he contemplates the sacred bonds of matrimony! Indeed, Octavia, I should hardly be despondent, if I were you—and, in any case, it is quite impossible, to read a gentleman’s heart.”
    â€œImpossible, indeed!” Octavia observed, with a small stoic laugh.
    In such wise the sisters idly spoke, the while they did their fancywork and the languid afternoon waned; and no disturbance announced itself more stridently than a nearby raven, or a cicada, or an o’erimpetuous bullfrog down at the river.
    It was then, in a stealthy motion, that Deirdre drew forth the locket she wore on a gold chain around her neck, to open it, and to stare intently at the faded daguerreotypes inside: an action that could not fail to offend her sisters. (For the daguerreotypes were of her natural parents, who had died some six years previous, in the dread typhoid epidemic of 1873. It was believed that Deirdre’s mother had given her the locket, shortly before her death, with instructions never to remove it, lest something unfortunate happen: so the stubborn child, in the very bosom of her new family, made a show of opening the locket upward of a dozen times daily, to gaze upon the old pictures with an expression of sickly yearning.)
    In order to deflect attention from Deirdre’s rude gesture, Samantha said nervously: “Do you think there might be some difficulty? I mean,