The woman in the bed stirs; the tangle of dark hair, the bleary, ice-blue eyes, even the way she looks about (even briefly) for the nearest mirror, all so awfully familiar. Flavia wants to weep, and laugh, and run away, and throw herself into Feely's arms, to do everything all at once.

Then she opens her mouth, asks her question--in Flavia's last sensible moment, she realizes it might even have been a joke--and everything coalesces like sediment at the bottom of a beaker, into the one emotion Flavia knows best, when it comes to her sisters.

"That's all you have to say for yourself?" Flavia responds, in a voice so deadly quiet it almost sounds like Father's,just before he sent her to her room without supper. "You stupid fool, Feely, you stupid, utter fool."