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resented her for it; my mother once told Aunt Vida that if she could have had one magical wish, it would have been for the power of making herself invisible whenever she chose.
    Why Edgar and Jack had gone to Australia, my aunt professed not to know, beyond hinting that they had left the army under some sort of cloud. Louisa insisted upon following them (“no more than they deserved”); but my mother refused to accompany her, and my grandfather George, taking courage from his daughter’s example, had refused to go either, and so the family split in two. According to Aunt Vida, Louisa had never written to my mother again.
    The only likeness my mother had kept was a miniature of her own grandmother—her father’s mother, whom she had never known—it showed a fair, pretty young woman with her hair elaborately curled, but gave no sense of her personality. The miniature lived in Mama’s jewel box, along with a wonderful array of rings, pendants, beads, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings—nothing of any value, she said, but to me a treasure-trove. Her one truly precious possession was the brooch her father had given her when she came of age; she discovered after he died that he had paid a hundred pounds for it, far more than he could really afford. It was a dragonfly in silver and gold, less than two inches across, with rubies for eyes and a larger ruby, surrounded by clusters of tiny diamonds, set into each of its four wings. There were even smaller diamonds studded along its slender tail; its delicate legs and feelers were made of pure gold, and when Mama pinned it on her dress, the long gold pin was completely hidden; the dragonfly seemed to have settled upon her breast.
    About my father I knew even less. I had never seen a picture of him, either, and I had only the vaguest idea of what he might have looked like: bearded—but so were most men—with brown hair—like most men; tall, but not especially tall; handsome, but not in any particular way. As a child, I had simply accepted whatever Mama had told me, which was mostly about their life in London when they were first married, and especially about his work amongst the poor of Clerkenwell, and what a good and kind and conscientious doctor he had been, but somehow these conversations had left me with very little impression of him. Papa’s parents had died, she said, before she had met him, and if he had had brothers or sisters, uncles or aunts, she had never mentioned them. For all I knew to the contrary, his entire family might have been locked up in Bedlam.
    By the time I was eight or nine, I had come to believe that the subject of Papa—and especially their time at Nettleford, where he had taken so long to recover his health, even after I was born—was painful to her, though she tried very hard not to show it, and so I gradually ceased to question her. Perhaps if Mama and I had been living alone, I might have been more insistent. But our little household seemed to me quite complete, until all thought of my father was swept away by the shock of Mama’s sudden death.
     
    I had become so absorbed in these recollections that I was startled to hear Bella’s voice in the doorway, telling me that “Mr. Mardent” would like to see me, if I felt well enough. I did not connect the name with Dr. Straker’s parting remark, and agreed uneasily, assuming that another doctor had come to examine me. But the young man who appeared in the doorway a few moments later looked, as Dr. Straker had intimated, more like a poet than a physician.
    He was about the same height as Dr. Straker, but slender, almost emaciated, with thick brown hair, parted in the middle and worn quite long. Light from the window fell across his face, revealing sensitive features and dark, liquid eyes. He wore a suit of dark brown corduroy, with a loose white collar and a striped cravat.
    “Miss Ferrars? My name is Frederic Mordaunt; I am Dr. Straker’s assistant; he asked me to call on you.”
    The name