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minutes later, she conceded it was futile and closed the book. For a long while, she stared out the window at passing carriages, wondering how to alleviate this inexplicable and unprecedented restlessness. She needed to do something, to be active and engaged, rather than quiet and calm. Then she hit on a perfectly scandalous idea and went to find Melissa.
    Melissa, sitting on the edge of her seat, pressed her nose against the window.
    “Sit back, Melissa. It’s only London. You’ve seen it all before,” Catherine said dampingly.
    Melissa obeyed as she protested her sister’s unfair request. “But I haven’t, Cathy, not like this,” she insisted. “Never from a hired hack before.”
    “The type of conveyance does not alter the scenery,” she was assured.
    “Oh, but it does. London looks much more exciting this way.” She heard her sister laugh. “The buildings are not quite so imposing from the seat of our boring old carriage drawn by boring old Higgins.”
    “Higgins is no more than thirty,” Catherine said, in defense of their coachman.
    “I don’t mean that kind of old. I mean the other kind of old.”
    Catherine had no idea what her sister was talking about. “There is only one kind of old, puss.” She glanced out the window and saw the British Museum. “We are here.”
    Melissa squealed in delight and pressed her nose to the window again. “Is that it? That giant white building with the beautiful columns? Oh, it is gorgeous.” She turned to her sister and took her hand. “I will never forget this, Cathy, as long as I live.”
    Catherine laughed at her sister’s histrionics. Clearly Evelyn wasn’t the only one in the family with a theatrical bent. “Don’t be so dramatic. It is just a visit to a museum.”
    “But it’s a museum that I have wanted to visit for the whole of my entire life.” She was lost in thought for a moment. Then she turned to her sister, concern etched into her face. “What are we going to tell Mama? She’s going to be furious when she finds out you’ve taken me here. You know she thinks the Elgin Marbles are indecent.”
    “Let me worry about our mother,” she told her, although Catherine actually wasn’t concerned at all. She didn’t know what she would say, but for the moment she didn’t care. She was almost as excited as Melissa. She, too, had been wanting to see the Elgin Marbles for a while, ever since she’d first read about them in the papers more than two years before. “Just enjoy yourself while we’re here.”
    The hack stopped, and the two Misses Fellingham climbed down. Once inside the doors of the great building, they were met by a young man, who encouraged them to wander around freely. “If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.”
    Catherine barely had time to thank him before Melissa dragged her off to the hall with the marbles, which she found almost by instinct. They were contained in a large room with a high ceiling.
    “These marbles are called metopes,” explained Melissa, unprompted. “This series is from the south side of the Parthenon and depicts the Lapiths fighting the centaurs, the half-human, half-horse creatures of ancient mythology. As you can see from this one”—she gestured to a sculpture in which a centaur was dealing a blow to the head of the Lapith while receiving one to his stomach—“the two are engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Here a centaur is carrying off a Lapith woman. You may have noticed that the central nine carvings are out of step with the others as they are not part of the battle scenes. There is some controversy about what these have to do specifically with the centaurs. Someone—I can’t recall who—has suggested that these marbles derive from the well-known story of the Centauromachy in which the centaurs disrupt a wedding. Perhaps these women are preparing for the wedding. Another theory argues that an Attic myth is being represented. Yet another claims to see episodes in Daedalus’