From scraps of paper found in the room of Mrs. Philip (Temperance) Castmarble, St. Armengard’s Respite House:

” … they pity me here, sympathetic whisperings that I have no visitors … I ask you, can a person easily lend themselves to the care of those so utterly daft? … ridiculous … Mrs. Undercrypt has come regularly …”

“I cannot help the tears as they tumble … she comforts me … sits next to me at the window and takes my hand in hers … ‘You must try to forget’ she entreats me softly and soothes my brow … I am nervous meeting her gaze, but her grip upon my hand is firm … so firm …”

“… proof of my madness … her eyes glowing like embers, so terrifying and yet warm … safe … voice is low and her words relax me … cannot recall how I came to lie in my bed with tossed sheets like a child … daybreak … upon my pillow, a drop of blood … upon my nightgown, two more … ”

“I am the most unfortunate of women, but I am not without my friends.”

Here ends Part the Second of Two, if it please the Examiner