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the Totham girls fell on the frugal breakfast like wolves on the fold. She ate hurriedly, much as a convict would in a communal cell, not sure she could defend her small breakfast from her charges.
    Instructions were sent up soon after that Hannah and Caroline were to be dressed in their newest gowns and brought down to meet their mother's guests at precisely half past eleven. But on their way downstairs, Caroline's heel caught in the muslin of her hem, ripping off a foot of ruffled flounce. By the time they'd repaired to the nursery to change her frock, Serena and the girls were ten minutes late arriving in the drawing room.
    The butler announced the two young girls because Mrs. Totham liked to put on airs before her friends and before Serena could pass completely through the door, she heard Mrs. Totham say in an icy tone, "Where is your new gown, Caroline?"
    "Blythe is so clumsy she made me stumble on the stairs and my shoe tore the flounce."
    "It's impossible to find good hired help," Mrs. Totham acerbically said, smiling tightly at the two ladies seated across the tea table from her.
    "And they have no manners," a large, thin-faced matron c ommiserated. "I had to sack our governess last week when she failed to meet our high standards."
    Serena recognized the rector's wife, the daughter of a prosperous merchant who had traded her considerable dowry for the younger son of a baron in need of funds to maintain his rectory. And she supposed the rector's wife's high standards had to do more with deference than manners tor she had neither charity nor courtesy herself.
    "Take the price of the gown from her wages," the wife of the Tothams' solicitor curtly said, as if Serena weren't standing directly behind the Totha m girl s — a s if she were invisible.
    "At Madame La Clerque's prices, she wouldn't be paid for two years," Mrs. Totham pointed out with both pride and anger.
    "It would serve her right," the rector's wife declared. Isn't she the one with the viscount for a father? An ungodly, iniquitous man if I recall. A gambler and utter disgrace to the Christian community."
    "You didn't know my father," Serena abruptly declared, her weariness perhaps impulse to her unguarded response.
    "Apologize to Mrs. Stanton," Mrs. Totham snapped, her voice bristling with anger. "This instant."
    "It was uncivil of her to revile my father without knowledge of him or his circumstances," Serena stubbornly retorted.
    "You ungrateful, impudent creature. After all we've done tor you! Apologize!" Maud Totham's fat cheeks were bright red with rage, her eyes virulent.
    Serena stood mutinous, not even sure herself why she'd finally taken a stand, aware in the less emotional portions of her brain that she was committing a kind of suicide in her refusing. Aware as well of the breath-held censure that seemed to smother the room in an ominous silence.
    The muted scrape of Mrs. Totham's chair on the plush carpet broke the stillness, and raising her bulk from her seat with remarkable swiftness, she rushed at Serena in a rustle of silk skirts, her face and quivering chins apoplectic scarlet. "How dare you oppose me," she lashed out, her voice tight with rage, and coming within striking distance, she slapped Serena with such fury, she stumbled momentarily before catching her balance.
    Struck dumb by the sudden attack, Serena stood motionless, her cheek stinging from the blow.
    The girls broke into giggles, Mrs. Totha m shrieked at Serena like a madwoman, and the two guests sat back with smug smiles to view the tempestuous scene.
    As the crescendo of epithets, threats, and abuse broke over her, an odd, inexplicable sense of finality overcame Seren a — s imultaneously dreadful and uplifting. Without a word, she turned and walked away from four years of unmitigated misery.
    "Don't you turn away from me!" Mrs. Totham screamed. "Come back here this minute! Do you hear?" Her shrill voice echoed in the large drawing room, acrimonious and hostile, reverberating in