I did not attend the funeral, but I was also spared from most consultation with my mother-in-law in the day that followed the old man’s death. Luke offered me the bedroom adjoining his, the one that Miss Courtenay was to have occupied after they were married, and I took it. We did not speak more than a few words together the whole day, and we slept separately. It was as if we had gambled on the inheritance coming through, and were then to be punished for wishing the old man dead.

The only blessing was that I was permitted to sleep alone, rather than with some sort of guard. And I did, fitfully, but without the fear that a monster would try to break down my door.

On the morning of the second day, I was neither enlightened nor repentant. I was simply a young and confused wife, wondering whether she was to be thrown away from the family that was supposed to be hers. My only consolation was that Lillian asked me to resume tutoring her that morning, though I was so abstracted that she could not have been learning much.

“Why did Dante decide to write in Italian, then?” she asked me.

“What is that?” I responded.

“Well, you said it was very important that he wrote in Italian, rather than in Latin. Can you tell me why?”

“Dante,” I said, and for a moment I could remember nothing about the famed poet. Then little fragments of my memory came back. “Yes, he wrote in the language that people spoke on the street. Try doing that in a sonnet, and then we shall discuss his technique.”

I had always believed that one should learn by doing. But I knew that learning about marriage by getting married, before I had been either prepared or forewarned, may not have been the wisest idea.

While Lillian was trying to puzzle out a sonnet in a vernacular that she did not even speak — for really, what experience had she with the way English people spoke on the street, she who had almost never walked on a street in her short life — we were interrupted.

“Lillian,” said Mrs. Barlow. “If you would take your work elsewhere, please.

“Yes, mama,” said the girl, giving me a nervous glance. She probably knew far more than she ought about the trouble in my marriage. Indeed, she was wise beyond her years in many areas of life, and I was saddened to think that her experiences with her grandfather might make her fearful.

I moved to a little chair by the fire, and Mrs. Barlow sat down and looked at her hands. She wasn’t even taking out her work, which I took to be a bad omen.

Still, generally speaking, I felt a little bit of relief. For since Miss Courtenay had been sent packing, at least I could feel assured that the things she was hearing about me were no longer poison. She was likely far too busy wandering around telling neighbors that she had always known about her son’s upcoming marriage to a girl of little family and no money. It was a ridiculous fiction, but I knew from watching my mother’s employers that the very rich relied on completely unbelievable stories when their lives did not follow a rigid and inhumane script.

“I hope you are well,” she said to me, and in my heart I had to laugh. She probably wished that I had taken poison and died, but I smiled anyway.

“Quite well, thank you. Though Lillian still seems set down. Could I not take her out for some sort of excursion?”

“You say that you are worried for Lillian,” she said, peering at me as though I were speaking Greek.

“Yes,” I told her. “She was thrilled to come out this year, and yet the season will start without her if we are not rather quick about introducing her into society.”

Mrs. Barlow blinked. “Well, that is a worry that I will address alone. You need have no part in it. In fact, I have made arrangements so that you can go back to your own family as expediently as possible.”

Now it was my turn to blink. “Mrs. Barlow, I’m afraid that the law very clearly considers you my family, not my dear mother. I am sure she would love to see me, but when we are all in town I shall visit her.”

Mrs. Barlow shook her head, thrusting a little purse at me. “This is for your travel.”

I noted that she did not address me by name. After all, I had been “Miss Quinton” and was now “Mrs. Barlow,” and I might have even been more entitled to the name than she was.

Except that instead of moving to the dower house and leaving me to take my place at Luke’s side, she apparently thought that banishing me was the more reasonable course.

“And where will I go, to the Tower of London?” I asked her. For in turning me out, she was also telling me that I was losing my new home and any hope of a reference. With no reference, I would not get any employment.

“You are not a prisoner,” she answered, and looked away. It seemed as if she wished to be finished with the conversation.

“No,” I told her, “But, as I mentioned earlier, I am your daughter-in-law.”

These words were the ones that incensed Mrs. Barlow. She removed her hands from their elegant folded position in her lap, clenching her hands into fists. “You could not possibly have acquired that position in a less honorable way. You think that I wish you to stay and become an example for my own daughter?”

I thought of Lillian. “I think that your own daughter has plenty to learn from everyone in this family.”

Mrs. Barlow’s voice, though quiet, was still harsh. “If you do not wish to be escorted from this house, you will leave tomorrow. That is all I have to say on the subject.”