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very strange in him. Most gentlemen took one look at Marigold and responded very differently, at the very least calling her fair fatality, and proffering their hearts.
    She sank down on a stool by the dressing table and gazed at herself in the looking glass, watched a practiced tear trickle down one porcelain cheek. "It is very hard of you to pinch at me when I am in such a quandary. Oh, Georgie, I don't know what I'm going to do."
    Neither did Georgie know what she was going to do, with a household on the verge of revolt. If rebellion wasn't yet in the air, it soon enough would be. Georgie didn't imagine that Janie—even then attacking the guest bedroom with sweeping-brush and dustpan and moist tea leaves—would be overjoyed to learn that in addition to her numerous other duties, she was about to be asked to serve as lady's maid. Agatha was unlikely to appreciate someone whose palate was not sufficiently adventurous to savor such delicacies as eels à la tartare and fried cow's heel. Tibble, though he might be willing, was not sufficiently robust to undertake duties more strenuous than those he already attempted to perform. And Andrew's nerves were not likely to benefit from exposure to a sad shatterbrain like Marigold.
    Still, Marigold was Georgie's oldest friend. There was no real harm in her, other than being dreadfully spoiled, which was not surprising in someone who had been cosseted from the cradle and married three times by the time she was twenty-six. Georgie sank down in the faded wing chair and picked up her embroidery. "You still have not explained this quandary of yours. Suppose you start at the beginning," she suggested.
    Marigold rose from the stool to pace back and forth across the faded rug. "I wouldn't have to start from the beginning if you had not lost my letter, which was very bad of you, because it took me the longest time to write it all down. Yes, and it was also very dear to post! Oh! This is all Leo's fault."
    Georgie blinked. Leo had been the first of Marigold's husbands, with whom she had eloped when she was fifteen. The union had been short-lived, due to the disappearance of the bridegroom during his honeymoon. "Have you heard from Leo?" she asked, with genuine interest.
    "Oh, that I had!" Marigold wiped away a tear. "Leo alwaysknew what to do. If only you had met him you would understand. He was so dashing, so handsome, so—romantic!" Prettily, she cast down her eyes. "How different my life would have been had not poor Leo met up with foul play."
    How different Marigold's life might have been had she not been taken advantage of by a man of the world, amended Georgie, silently. Beautiful though she might be, Marigold's understanding was not powerful; she was heedless and stubborn and extravagant, a charming, gay butterfly with scant interest beyond the moment and what amusement it might bring.
    It was hardly for Georgie to censure anyone's conduct. Only a short time past she had herself been regretting that she was a respectable female. "What do you think happened to him?" she asked.
    Marigold pressed her hand to her lush bosom. "It is such a puzzle! I have wracked my brains until I cannot think! Leo would never have parted from me willingly, I vow." From her sleeve she plucked a lacy handkerchief and wiped away another tear. "You know that Papa cut me off after my elopement, for which I suppose I cannot blame him, because much as I doted on Leo, even I must admit that he was not the thing. Oh, but we would have lived a carefree life of dissipation, and he would have taken me to fascinating places, and shown me all manner of forbidden stuff." She paused, lost in wistful imaginings.
    Delicately, Georgie coughed. Reluctantly, Marigold returned to the present. "But it was not to be. Leo disappeared, and though I thought I should die from a spasm of the heart, clearly I did not. I knew nothing of Leo's family, or even if he had a family. And so unaccustomed was I to being purse-pinched that I