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furnishings and decorations in your room are all my property, and I will treat any attempt to remove them from the house as theft.”
    Since the decorations in question were a mildewed sampler I had stitched at age eight and a dreary mezzotint entitled “Waifs of the Storm,” I could assure Father with perfect truth that I had no intention of trying to abscond with them. I had little enough to pack: my few dresses, my sewing things, and my books. I would have liked to have had Lionel’s Latin and Greek texts, which had always been more mine than his, but Father had disposed of them along with most of his possessions. The only mementos I had of my brother were a brooch with his hair, a miniature portrait of him at eighteen years old, and the copy of Varney, the Vampyre; or, the Feast of Blood he had pressed on me before he left (he had always enjoyed sensation fiction).
    But, however scanty these souvenirs might be, they were more than I had with which to remember my mother. I had never asked my father for any of her possessions; I didn’t even know if he had kept anything belonging to her. As I ate in my usual silence it began to seem unsupportable to leave my father’s house forever without taking from it something of my mother. Even if it was only a tidbit of knowledge of her—the name of a song she had sung to me, her favorite author, the way she had dressed her hair—I could not go away empty-handed.
    “Father,” I said, and it was so unusual for me to address him that he put down his fork to narrow his eyes at me, “I have never asked you this before, but as I am leaving in two days’ time and will trouble you no more, I must ask you now: what happened to Mother’s belongings after she died?”
    He regarded me for a moment, then resumed chewing. He swallowed, took a sip of claret, and said, “I burnt them.”
    The ruthlessness of it momentarily robbed me of breath.
    “Why?”
    “What a ridiculous question. Why does a man whose wife has just died do anything? I should scarcely be held accountable for my actions at such a time.” Calmly he speared another bite of mutton.
    “But there must have been things you would have kept. Her letters, her jewelry—”
    “Ha, jewelry!” He smiled wryly. “The true nature of your interest emerges. You’re greedy for whatever fine jewels and valuables she may have left.”
    I could not even find any anger in me to greet this accusation. “Very well, I can understand that it would be painful for you to be reminded of her. But surely you would not have destroyed a portrait.”
    “Who said there was a portrait?”
    “There must have been one, if—” I had started to say, if she had been the stepsister of a duchess, surely she would have been painted, but I did not wish to reveal my new knowledge. Instead I said, “When you married, I would have expected you to want a portrait of your wife. Any bridegroom would.”
    He chuckled as he poured himself more claret. “And what would you know about bridegrooms, girl? That’s a subject you’ll never have any experience in.”
    “Yes, Father,” I said, falling back on the established formula.
    Perhaps it was the wine, or the knowledge that I would be leaving in two days, but for whatever reason he seemed to be in a fairly benign mood. Instead of letting the subject die, as I expected him to, he said after a moment, “Yes, there was a portrait.”
    “Was?” My heart lurched. “You didn’t burn it, too?”
    A slow smile spread across his face, and he gazed almost dreamily at his glass of claret, turning it so that the gaslight glinted off the faceted crystal and set the wine glowing like a drowned flame. “No. I did not burn it.”
    He was enjoying himself, drawing this out deliberately to keep me in suspense, but I had to ask the question he was waiting to hear. “Where is it, then? May I see it?”
    Another long, deliberate pause, and he slowly tipped the last of his wine down his throat. Then, setting the glass