Elizabeth opened the book. The words swam at first, then settled. She tilted her head slightly—just so—and brought the page nearer. Her left eye adjusted. The shapes sharpened.
She began to read.
Outside, the morning carried on as it always did. Voices in the distance. The faint creak of a cart upon the lane. Somewhere, a bird called from the hedgerow.
Within, the room was still.
Elizabeth turned a page. And for a little while, at least, the world arranged itself into something she could wholly see.
After a time, her head began to throb. She read the same line three times before understanding it.
Elizabeth let out a small breath and lowered the book a little, blinking against the faint ache already beginning behind her left eye. The morning light was good, stronger here than in most places in the house, and yet even good light could not undo what had been done. It merely made the effort easier for a time.
She rested the book against her knee and turned her face toward the window. From this angle she could see only a portion of the lawn with any clearness, but it was enough to know the day had ripened into one of unusual mildness. The grass shone where the dew had not long since lifted. Beyond it, the shrubbery blurred into softened greens and browns, and farther still the lane disappeared into brightness. If she narrowed her eye and looked too long, the edges of things sharpened for half a breath before dissolving again into indistinctness. She had learned not to chase clarity once it fled. The pursuit only punished her.
A movement in the doorway drew her attention.
“Lizzy?” It was Kitty, speaking gently as though uncertain whether she would be welcome.
Elizabeth smiled at once. “You need not hover as though I were a fretful great-aunt. Come in.”
Kitty entered with a piece of workbasket ribbon looped carelessly about her wrist and shut the door softly behind her. Though still more subdued than Lydia by nature, she had long since lost the shrinking hesitancy that used to make her seem scarcely formed in her own opinions. The change had come gradually enough that Elizabeth could not have named the exact moment of it, but she felt its result now in the calm steadiness with which Kitty crossed the room and took the chair opposite her.
“I did not mean to hover,” Kitty said, though she smiled a little. “Only to see whether you had a megrim already.”
“Not yet. I am merely wavering on excellent terms with one.”
Kitty’s expression turned sympathetic. “Then perhaps you ought not to read.”
“Jane has already said as much.”
“And she is usually right.” There was slight admonishment in her sister’s tone.
Elizabeth tipped her head. “You grow dangerously sensible.”
“I am older than I was.” Pride, now. Elizabeth had learned to discern much form one’s inflection after she lost her sight.
“So am I, unhappily.”
Kitty’s gaze moved to the book in her lap. “Is that the one Aunt Gardiner sent?”
“Yes. She writes that it is diverting, though I begin to suspect she recommended it in the hope that I should improve myself.”
“That does not sound like Aunt Gardiner.”
“No. Which proves how little I have progressed, for she still hopes it.” Elizabeth hoped her sister heard the tease in her voice.
Kitty laughed softly, then grew reflective. For a moment she turned the ribbon about her fingers, smoothing it. Elizabeth watched her, waiting. In the old days Kitty would have blurted out whatever lay nearest her mind. Now she often approached a thought as though testing its edges before offering it.
At length she said, “Mama did not mean anything by it at breakfast.”
Elizabeth kept her gaze upon her sister’s hands. “I know.”
“She is only—”
“Very much herself?”
Kitty huffed a little laugh. “Yes. That.”
