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ascent up a winding street so dark and densely wooded that, even encased in the safety of a taxi, Wanda had felt like an endangered character in a Grimm fairy tale. But the woods cleared at the top of the hill, and there was the Hughes mansion.
    "Are you sure this is the right place?" Wanda had asked the cabdriver. He looked down at the piece of paper she'd handed him when she got in the cab. "Yeah. This is it. You're gonna rent a room here?"
    “Maybe.” Wanda kept her eyes on the house as she gathered her things.
    The Hughes residence—which sat on a huge lot in a neighborhood where all the houses were mansions—was astonishing: towering ornate pillars, tiered and cantilevered porches, multipeaked roof, leaded and stained glass windows. There was even an adjacent carriage house. But beneath all this grandeur, Wanda sensed something tired and sad. An art historian would have described the Hughes mansion as a splendid example of early-nineteenth-century Neoclassic/Romantic hybridism; but to Wanda, the house looked like a big neglected wedding cake.
    "Geez. How much rent are they gonna be chargin' you?" Wanda paid the cabbie and got out of the car. "Not nearly enough." Then she started up the steps toward the massive front porch.
    She'd be a perfect Mother Abbess, Wanda thought when Margaret opened the door. Solid and androgynous, she looked nothing like her voice— which on the phone had been oddly high-pitched and squeaky. Margaret's eyes, though, were the real surprise. They were shimmering, reflective. The turquoise of a glacial lake on the fairest day of summer. It was her eyes, Wanda decided later, that had disarmed her so completely. Why else would she have launched into her long confessional about Peter and come so utterly undone? Stupid. She'd nearly ruined her chance to win what had to be the best rental bargain in the city.
    The inside of the house was as remarkable as the outside. It had been built in 1909, Margaret explained, at a time when wealth from the Alaskan gold rush and the accompanying timber and shipping industries had begun transforming Seattle into a boomtown. Her father had been an investor in these growing industries. "He was good at making money," she said dryly.
    The house was fifteen thousand square feet—the floor space of an average three-bedroom home, Wanda calculated, multiplied by ten— and it contained one amazing architectural feature after another: parquet floors, gilded canvas murals, carved oak columns and capitals, ornate plaster ceilings, brass fixtures, marbled and tiled fireplaces. Just this side of rococo, all of it was glistening and pristine and impeccably maintained. The outside of the house and its grounds may have been suffering from neglect, but on the inside, it could have been brand new.
    And then there were Margaret's things. They were kept in glass-fronted built-in and freestanding cabinets which lined the walls of virtually every room in the house. The dining room alone contained what had to be thousands of pieces of functional dinnerware, coffee and tea sets, and serving pieces. Margaret identified a few of these, listing their names with detachment, as if she were reading from an insurance schedule. "Sherbet pails, 1781. Pigeon pie tureen, 1851. Chocolate service, 1815. Cheese bell, 1870. Tete-a-tete, 1775. Oyster stand, 1862. Strawberry dish, 1868. Ewer and basin, 1790. Coffeepot, 1730 . . ."
    As they moved through the rest of the house, Wanda discovered that there were even more pieces that were purely decorative. In the small downstairs parlor, one cabinet contained animals in general—cats, foxes, sheep, squirrels, horses, lions, elephants, camels, cows—while another was devoted to various breeds of porcelain dogs. The large parlor was populated with grouped figures: hunting parties, mothers and children, cupids, courting peasants, boccie players, Greek gods. And on and on . . .
    "Are all of these porcelain?" Wanda had asked.
    "Not all, but many."
    "Where