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winced.
    â€œI will not discuss such a thing here!” her mother exclaimed. “And you should have more sense than to acquaint that innocent young girl with such personal matters!”
    â€œWell someone needed to tell her, Mother.” The words came from Ellis’s mouth but tears stung her eyes. “She’s nearly seventeen and Sarah knew I was studying at the School of Medicine and she didn’t feel comfortable asking her mother about it. That Sargent boy has been fluttering around her and from what I hear he has something of a reputation…”
    The audience in the theater laughed out loud at the cleverness of Ellis’s dialogue. She turned around in anguish.
    â€œStop it, Merrick!” Ellis demanded. “Make it stop!”
    The masked revelers in the packed audience roared with delight.
    â€œBut that’s not possible.” Merrick smiled back in satisfaction. “It’s your play! If you want to end it, then go ahead and finish it !”
    Ellis turned to face her mother, knowing what would follow and dreading it.
    â€œThen it is true,” her mother said, fire in her eyes and her brow furrowed in distress. “You discussed the most intimate knowledge between a husband and a wife with Sarah Lawrence? How could you, Ellis! Her father is a bishop!”
    â€œIt’s hardly a secret, Mother!” Ellis said, tears welling up in her eyes despite the hotness of her words. Finish it! “I’m told that people come into the world pretty much the same way everywhere. Any farm girl in the world who has ever raised so much as a dog or a pig knows more about sex than the debutantes of the Boston Brahmins.”
    Victoria sprang up from her chair with a suddenness that surprised Ellis. Her mother raised her hand and brought it sharply across Ellis’s face with a stinging crack.
    Ellis, still wearing her clown costume, fell to the floor from the shock of the blow, just as she had remembered it. She still felt the sting of it on her hot cheek.
    Victoria stood over her, trying to rub the pain from her hand. Tears were running down her cheeks as well but her mother had set her mind to a course of action and there would be no going back.
    â€œYou think this is some sort of lark?” Her mother’s voice shook with her rage. “You’ve squandered every social opportunity we have afforded you. You’ve taken no interest in any of the boys we’ve arranged for you to meet and your behavior at your cotillion was an embarrassment to the family!”
    â€œI am not an embarrassment!” Ellis responded on cue, though she knew that in her mother’s eyes she most certainly was a heartbreaking disappointment.
    â€œDo you know why I agreed to send you to medical school?” Victoria continued. “It was not because you idolize your father, although that is certainly true enough. I permitted it because I despaired of you ever managing to make a proper place in Boston society. I thought if you got this ridiculous notion out of your head that you might come to your senses and make a marriage that would secure your future and that of your family.”
    â€œAh!” the audience sighed behind her, but Ellis barely heard it.
    Victoria looked down on the quaking form of her daughter. She reached down toward her but then hesitated and withdrew. “I see now that this is all just a game to you, something for your mother to play at. Well, you can’t win the game until you learn the rules…”
    Ellis looked up in shock.
    â€œThe rules of Boston society are complicated and unforgiving. Their rules are my rules and now they are your rules as well,” Victoria said as she slowly sat back down, regaining her cool poise as she did. “You are going to play by those rules, Ellis, or—as it is the only thing that seems to motivate you—I will take away your schooling and your ambitions after your father’s profession. You