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woman said.
    The audience behind Ellis roared with laughter.
    Ellis gaped at the woman in the servant’s dress. “Your name … Your name is Emma.”
    â€œYes, Miss Ellis,” the woman replied with a puzzled look of her own. “You’ve known me since you drew your first breath. What kind of game are you playing at now, child?”
    â€œEllis!”
    It was another voice, this time from the back of the stage. In the moment the two peacocks pulled aside the doors and vanished with them into the wings.
    There, toward the back of stage, was a woman in an elegant purple dress, her back as straight as that of the wingback chair in which she sat. Her hands were folded in her lap with study the precision. Her face, in its day, might have been considered to be an exceptional beauty if it had not been for a slight overbite and a minor irregularity in the straightness of her teeth. Her face was narrow, with high cheekbones. Her hair was carefully styled, a predominantly dark color partly due to the woman paying excessive attention to keeping the gray roots at bay. It was in her large, dark eyes, however, where her most formidable weapon lay and the all-too-familiar gaze with which she now fixed Ellis.
    â€œEllis, I have just entertained Mrs. Lawrence,” the woman said without preamble. “And she has given me a report of the most alarming nature regarding your conduct. I have warned you about this time and time again and still you insist on ignoring my wishes and my direction in this. Is it true what Mrs. Lawrence has told me? Is it true what the entire street not to mention every member of our social circle and a good many beyond will be gossiping about before the sun has a chance to go down?”
    A murmur of concern washed over the stage as it was uttered by the audience collectively.
    Ellis started shaking, her eyes fixed on the woman in the chair.
    â€œAre you going to answer me?”
    Silenus moved to prompt her, but Ellis spoke on her own.
    â€œYes, Mother,” she replied.

 
    5
    UNWARRANTED ACTS
    â€œYes it is true or yes you’re going to answer me?” the woman seated in the wingback chair demanded, although there was a quiver in her voice.
    â€œBoth, I suppose.” Ellis spoke the words as though she were delivering lines in the play. They were words that she had spoken before and though it pained her to repeat them, she felt compelled to reproduce them now. It was her first and tenuous connection with the true memory of her past and yet the crushing pain of it was nearly too much to bear.
    Men and women costumed as suns, moons and stars brought in a pair of painted flats that resembled her mother’s drawing room of the house. One of the painted flats featured a large window. As Ellis watched, the window in the painting began to brighten with the light of an afternoon sun. Leaves on the painted trees began to move in an afternoon breeze while the muted sound of their rustling passed across the stage. Ellis could smell the lacquer of the finished wood below the wainscot of the walls.
    â€œThis is no time for your impertinence,” her mother snapped at her.
    Victoria Bradlee-Harkington, Ellis realized with a shock. My mother’s name.
    Victoria was not a woman to be trifled with but there was definitely pain behind her stern eyes. “This is a serious matter, young lady!”
    The audience behind Ellis uttered a collective “ooh,” anticipating Ellis’s response.
    â€œI quite agree,” Ellis said hesitantly, drawing the words from reluctant memory. She had a terrible feeling of foreboding. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this again. Yet Ellis could not help but utter the words she knew she would later regret. “I think it very serious that Mrs. Lawrence’s daughter should be so shockingly unfamiliar with how humans reproduce.”
    The audience behind her gave an appreciative laugh. Ellis