Chapter 18: Mr. Hartwell Speaks Without Irony

The summons came the way her father's most serious summons always came: not as a summons at all, but as a book left on the hall table where she would see it on her way down to breakfast.

This morning it was his Seneca. She recognised the edition — the one he read when he was finished being ironic about something and had arrived, reluctantly, at feeling it directly. She picked it up. She set it down. She went to the kitchen and asked for tea she did not drink, and then she walked to the library and knocked.

"Come in," he said, which was also unusual. He did not generally require the formality of knocking. The fact that he had called it back suggested he had needed the moment between her knock and her entrance, which told her more than the Seneca had.