she had stolen him from us."
"What is his brother like?"
"Waldo? Oh!" Dagmar laughed as if some memory amused her. "Much plainer, much duller, at first. He hasn't any of Friedrich's charm. But we grew to appreciate him. And, of course, his wife was always popular. It makes such a difference, you know. Perhaps in a way Ulrike was right. Whom we marry does alter us more than I used to think. In fact, only when you ask me do I realize how both brothers changed over the years. Waldo became stronger and wiser, and he learned how to win people's affection. I think he's happy, and that makes people kinder, don't you think?"
"Yes," Hester said with sudden feeling. "Yes, it does. What happened to Countess Rostova after Friedrich and Gisela left? Did she miss him terribly?"
Dagmar seemed surprised by the question.
"I don't know. She did some very strange things. She went to Cairo and took a boat up the Nile to Karnak. But I don't know if that had anything to do with Friedrich or if she would have gone anyway. I liked Zorah, but I can't say I ever understood her. She had some most peculiar ideas."
"For example?" Hester asked.
"Oh, about what women could achieve." Dagmar shook her head, laughing a little. "She even wanted us all to band together and refuse to have relations with our husbands unless they gave us some sort of political power. I mean ... she was quite mad! Of course, that was when she was very young."
Something stirred in Hester's memory. "Wasn't there a Greek play about something like that?"
"Greek?" Dagmar was amazed.
"Yes, ancient Greek. AH the women wanted to stop a war between two city-states... or something of the sort."
"Oh. I don't know. Anyway, it's absurd."
Hester did not argue, but she thought perhaps Zorah was not as alien to her own thoughts as she had supposed. She could imagine Rathbone's reaction if she were to tell him of such an idea. It made her laugh even to contemplate it.
Dagmar mistook her reaction, and relaxed, smiling as well, forgetting old tragedies and present threats for a while as they walked the length of the conservatory and smelled the flowers and the damp earth, before Hester went to see how Robert was.
As usual, she climbed the stairs and walked across the landing almost silently. She stood outside Robert's door, which was open about a foot, as was appropriate while he had a female visitor. She looked in, not wishing to interrupt should they be in conversation.
The room was full of sunlight.
Robert was lying back against his pillows, smiling, his attention entirely upon Victoria. She was reading to him from Malory's Morte d'Arthur, the love story of Tristram and Isolde. Her voice was gentle and urgent, filled with tragedy, and yet there was a music in it which transcended the immediacy of the quiet sickroom in an elegant London house and became all magic and doomed love, a universal longing.
Hester crept away and went into the dressing room where she had a cot bed made up so she could be close to Robert and respond instantly if he called her. She busied herself with a few duties of tidying up, folding and putting away clothes the laundry maid had brought back.
It was fifteen minutes later when she tapped on the door between her room and Robert's, and then gently pushed it open to see if perhaps he would like something to eat or a cup of tea.
"Next time I'll read about the Siege Perilous and the coming of Sir Galahad," Victoria said eagerly. "It is so full of courage and honor."
Robert sighed. Hester could see his face, pale and pinched with a kind of sadness at the corners of his mouth. Or perhaps it was fear. Surely he must have realized that he might never recover. He had said nothing to her, but he must have lain alone in that silent, tidy room with everything placed there by his parents' love. They were always just beyond the door watching, aching to help him, and knowing that nothing they could do did more than touch the surface. Underneath, the consuming fear, the darkness of dread, was beyond their ability to reach. It must never be out of their minds, and yet they dare not speak it.
Looking at Robert's eyes with the shadowed skin around them, thin and bruised, Hester knew it was just under the surface of all he said.
"Good," he replied politely to Victoria. "That's