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Ehlis Gregorio, was obsessed with amassing enormous wealth, and his wife was driven to find imaginative ways to spend it. Seeking to understand the reasons for Jardena’s extravagant whims is a waste of time, because she does not understand why she undertakes such things as the model of Theron Hall. She commits to such projects, Giles says, simply because she can afford to do them, and that is all the reason she needs.
    As Crispin rides the ladder, the door opens below, and his brother, Harley, rushes in from the third-floor hallway. “Crispin, come quick! You’ve got to see this.”
    “There are no cats,” Crispin says. “Except the ones in that drawing-room painting, and they’re not white.”
    “Not cats. Mirabell. You’ve got to see how she’s dressed.”
    “She can dress any way she likes. Why would I care?”
    “But this is weird.”
    “She’s always playing dress-up.”
    “Not like this,” Harley insisted. “Mom’s dressing her, and it’s just weird.”
    Before her marriage to Giles Gregorio, Clarette never had much time for her children. She says that she prefers to play with grown men. Children are her business, she explains, not a leisure-time activity. She sports or games, or cuddles, with them only on thoserare occasions when vodka and more powerful substances put her in a foolish or sentimental mood.
    Since the wedding, she has become even more remote from them. If anyone is
raising
Crispin, Harley, and Mirabell, it is the staff of Theron Hall.
    “I heard Mom say, when they finish fitting Mirabell’s new dress, they’re going to give her a bath in warm
milk
and rinse her with
aqua pura
, whatever that is.”
    From high on the ladder, Crispin at last looks down at his brother. “That
is
weird.”
    “And there’s other weird stuff like the hat they’ve made for her. You’ve got to come see.”
    The model of the mansion will be here for further exploration whenever Crispin wishes to return to it.
    He climbs down to a safe height before unhooking the tether and then descending the final ten rungs.
    As Crispin follows his brother into the third-floor hallway, Harley whispers, “They don’t know I saw. I think Pip’s new dress is for some surprise party or something, and probably we aren’t supposed to see it until then.”
    Hurrying down the back stairs, Harley explains that he was on the prowl for the mysterious white cats, alert and stealthy, when he came across the scene with their mother, Mirabell, and a housemaid named Proserpina.
    Among the many chambers on the second floor are a sewing room and a gift-wrapping room. They are side by side.
    Harley quietly leads Crispin into the gift-wrapping room. The single curtained window provides little light.
    An interior door connects this space with the place where Proserpina, not only a housemaid but also a seamstress, repairs and alters clothes for the family and staff. The door stands about three inches ajar.
    Harley crouches low, and Crispin leans over him, so they can both spy upon the activities in the sewing room.
    Mirabell stands on a yard-square platform about a foot high. Their mother kneels before her, fussing with the fancy collar of the girl’s white dress. Proserpina kneels behind Mirabell, pinning the waistline of the frock for some adjustment that she apparently will make.
    This is no ordinary dress. The fabric is shiny but less clingy than silk, less stiff than satin, so soft-looking. It almost seems to glow a little, as though the dress produces its own light. The cuffs and collar are made of lace, more intricate than any Crispin has previously seen.
    Mirabell wears white slippers with white bows. Attached to each bow is what appears to be a cluster of red berries.
    “I feel very pretty,” Mirabell says.
    “You
are
very pretty,” their mother replies.
    “These are like ballerina slippers.”
    “They are a little,” Clarette agrees.
    “Will we dance tonight?”
    “Some of us will dance,” Clarette says.
    “I know