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Alathea said, her face completely straight. “Remember I told you of the dead girl I passed in the City the other day? She was in her petticoat. It’s obviously the fashionable thing to wear for death.” It was a lie. The dead girl had been fully dressed.
    “It’s unseemly, you wandering about the City alone,” said Marianne. “Our mother would never allow it.”
    “I don’t have a mother.”
    Marianne reddened. How stupid to present Alathea with an opportunity to remind them. “Father, then,” she said.
    “What had happened to that poor girl?” Harriet frowned at Marianne, who mouthed “Well, it is unseemly.”
    Alathea waited until all eyes were focused on her again. “Her story’s clear enough,” she said, sidestepping Harriet’s last question.
    “Is it?” said Everina with a shudder. “Most stories don’t end with a hanging.”
    “A garroting,” corrected Alathea. “That was the end she chose, and who can blame her?” Alathea drew her knees under her. “Her story’s sadder than the guillotine girl’s. She was an only daughter, much beloved of her parents. They lived—her parents still live—in a big house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Her name was Raphaella and the house was full of people and music and everybody was happy. It could have lasted forever, except that a man came, a musician. He played many instruments, but when he touched a keyboard, everybody wanted to listen. And he was beautiful to look at—young and strong, with the kind of body you see in books on anatomy.”
    “You’ve seen books on anatomy?” Harriet, startled, could not help herself.
    “Of course,” said Alathea. “Don’t you want to know how men are made?”
    “I—I,” stammered Harriet, “I don’t think about them,” she said lamely. Alathea raised an eyebrow. Harriet raised one back.
    “I once saw Sam relieving himself against the garden wall,” said Everina. “It was—”
    “Don’t be coarse, Everina.” Marianne was at her most reproving.
    “You looked too,” retorted Everina. “You said—”
    “That’s enough,” Marianne barked.
    Alathea shrugged. “All I’m saying is that if you’d been Raphaella, you’d have wanted him.”
    “You mean, fallen in love with him,” Marianne contradicted.
    “As you like,” said Alathea. “Anyway, he and Raphaella began to play duets together. They were marvelous, and Raphaella soon found the two hours the musician spent at their house each day were the only hours that meant anything. But though she waited and waited, he never asked her to marry him. At first she wondered whether he ranked himself too far beneath her. But he always came through the front door, never the servants’ entrance. Then she wondered whether he had too little money for marriage. But his clothes were respectable and his horses shining. Then it came to her: he didn’t know she loved him. She hadn’t made it plain, so she plucked up her courage and told him straight. And he did something terrible.” She left the words hanging for a moment. The girls were agog. “He laughed.”
    Marianne sniffed. “That doesn’t seem so terrible.”
    Alathea said, “She told him he was everything to her. She told him she would abandon family and friends for him. She told him she loved him more than music. She offered herself to him body and soul. And he laughed. He might as well have stabbed her in the heart with the heel of one of Harriet’s new shoes.”
    Harriet scrutinized Alathea’s face. Was that a tremor of real pity or a tremor of contempt at their gullibility? Harriet was never sure of anything about Alathea.
    “Did she slap him?” Everina was asking. “I’d have slapped him.”
    “She didn’t touch him,” Alathea answered. “She felt the fault was hers. If a man who could make such music with her didn’t love her, she couldn’t be loved by anybody, so she cut a string from her harpsichord—it was bass A, a mournful note, don’t you think—and when the musician left,