He was reading Miss Ackroyd's letter about the pear tree for the fourth time when his sister came in with the candles.
"You'll put your eyes out," said Lady Anne Ancroft. "It's past four. Dunn says the Armstrong boy is worse."
"I'll go down in the morning." He did not look up. "Nan. Did Ackroyd tell you where his daughter was born?"
"He told everyone. In a house in Park Square with a hothouse for pineapples. He told the Bishop of Durham." Anne set the candles on the table and stood a moment with her hand on the back of his chair. She was three years older than he was, and thinner than she ought to have been, and she had their mother's long Ancroft face and their father's black brows, which gave her, even at rest, a look of having just been told something she did not believe. There was ink on the second finger of her right hand. There was always ink on it. "Why?"
"She says here she was born in a small house that smelled of damp books, with a pear tree that never ripened."
Anne was quiet for a moment. "Perhaps she was put out to nurse. Rich men's children often are. Perhaps it was a nurse's cottage."
"Perhaps." He laid the letter down on his knee and looked at the fire. "Do you know, I thought her the dullest girl in London. I sat with her for a quarter of an hour in her father's drawing room in Bruton Street, and she told me what wool was fetching in Wakefield, and asked me whether my coal was sea-sale or land-sale, and looked at the clock twice. I liked her for looking at the clock. I thought: here is a woman who will not pretend, and I will not have to either, and we shall do very well. And then she writes me this." He touched the letter. "I was wrong about her, Nan. Entirely. I don't know when I have been so wrong about anyone."
"People are often different on paper."
"Are they?" He turned his head and looked up at her. "I'm not. I'm worse on paper. I'm worse everywhere, but I'm worst on paper. That is why I have you."
Anne said nothing to that. She went to the writing table under the window and sat down at it, and took out a fresh sheet, and mended her pen. "What shall I tell her?"
"Tell her I read it." He was silent a while. "Tell her about the Armstrong boy. No—don't. She'll think I want pity. Tell her the heron's gone up river. Tell her I don't believe in nurse's cottages and I don't care where she was born. Tell her—" He stopped and made a short impatient sound, and got up and stood by the fire with his ruined hand held against his chest in the way he had when it ached, which was whenever the weather turned, which was always. "You know what I'd say. You've always known. You knew what I meant when I was eight and couldn't say it to Father. Say it better than I would."
"Myles—"