Chapter 23: What Mrs. Calloway Has Always Known

The hired carriage returned them to Gay Street at a quarter past two, which was an hour too late for propriety and precisely soon enough to prevent Mrs. Calloway from sending for the magistrate, which she had apparently been considering since eleven o'clock. She met them at the door in her dressing gown and a cap that had been hastily reassembled, holding a candle with the air of someone who had rehearsed her relief and found it insufficient to the occasion.

"You are unharmed," she said, surveying Petra with the rapid maternal inventory that covered hair, complexion, and the integrity of one's evening dress before it attended to anything so secondary as emotional state.

"Entirely," Petra said.