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Callista was to be Keeper at Arilinn, and it will go hard with him, to renounce that.” Andrew felt his heart sink. She said, “Don’t worry! I think it will be all right. Look, there is Callista now.”
    The door at the top of the steps opened, and Callista came down into the greenhouse. She held out herhands toward them, blindly.
    “I am not to return to Arilinn,” she said, “and Father has given his consent to our marriage—”
    She broke down then, sobbing. Andrew held out his arms, but she turned away from him and leanedagainst the heavy glass wall, hiding her face, her slender shoulders heaving with the violence of herweeping.
    Forgetting everything except her misery, Andrew reached for her; Damon touched him on the arm,shook his head firmly. Distressed, Andrew stood looking at the sobbing woman, unable to tolerate hermisery, unable to do anything about it, in helpless despair.
    Ellemir went to her and turned her gently around. “Don’t lean on that old wall, love, when there are threeof us here with shoulders to cry on.” She dried her sister’s tears with her long apron. “Tell us all about it. Was Leonie very horrible to you?”
    Callista shook her head, blinking her reddened eyes hard. “Oh, no, she couldn’t have been kinder…”
    Ellemir said, with a skeptical headshake, “Then why are you howling like a banshee? Here we wait, inagony lest we be told you’ll be whisked away from us and back to the Tower, and then when you cometo us, saying all is well, and we are ready to rejoice with you, you start blubbering like a pregnant servingwench!”
    “Don’t—” Callista cried. “Leonie… Leonie was kind, I truly think she understood. But Father—”
    “Poor Callie,” said Damon gently. “I have felt the rough side of his tongue often enough!”

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    Andrew heard the pet name with surprise and a sudden, sharp jealousy. It had never occurred to him,and the pretty abbreviation which Damon used so naturally seemed an intimacy which simply pointed uphis isolation. He reminded himself that Damon, after all, had been an intimate of the household since Callista was a small child.
    Callista raised her eyes and said quietly, “Leonie freed me from my oath, Damon, and without question.” Damon sensed the anguished struggle behind her controlled calm, and thought, If Andrew makes herunhappy, I think I will kill him   . Aloud he only said, “And your father, of course, was another story. Was he very terrible, then?”
    For the first time, Callista smiled. “Very terrible, yes, but Leonie is even more stubborn. She said thatyou cannot bind a cloud in fetters. And Father turned on me. Oh, Andrew, he said dreadful things, thatyou had abused hospitality, that you had seduced me—”
    “Damned old tyrant!” Damon said angrily. Andrew set his mouth in quiet wrath. “If he believes that—”
    “He does not, now,” Callista said, and her eyes held a hint of their old gaiety. “She reminded him that I was not now thirteen years old; that when the doors of Arilinn first closed behind me, he had surrendered forever all right to give or refuse me in marriage; that even if Leonie had found me unfit and sent me from the Tower before I was of legal age and declared a woman, it would have been   her   right, and not his, to find me a husband. And many other home truths which he did not find pleasant hearing.”
    “Evanda be praised that you are laughing again, darling,” Ellemir said, “but how did Father take these
    unkind truths?”
    “Well, he did not like it, as you can imagine,” Callista said, “but in the end there was nothing he could do but accept it. I think he was even glad to have Leonie to quarrel with; we have all humored him too much since he was wounded! He began to act like himself, and maybe he began to feel a little more like himself too. Then when he had grumbled himself into accepting it, Leanie set herself to charm him—told him how lucky he was to have two