ELIZABETH WOKE EARLY ON TUESDAY AND COULD not fall back to sleep, although she was grateful to have slept at all. The night had been restless and full of ghosts. She didn’t have the energy to choose a new outfit, so she put on the same dress she had worn the day before, the eyelet with the square neck and ruffles on the three-quarter-length sleeves. When she had finished dressing herself it was still well before breakfast, which she had little interest in anyway, so she went up to the morning room on the third floor. It was the room where the Holland women wrote their letters and stored their correspondence.

The most striking thing about the room, when she entered on that particular morning, was the heap of bridal fabrics from Lord & Taylor, which must have been delivered the previous afternoon. The room was simpler than the rest of the house, with wide dark floorboards and a plain metal frame for the fireplace. The wallpaper was an earthy brown with a velvet leaf pattern over it. The yards of silk muslin and point de gaze caught all the light and seemed almost to glow from the worktable in the center of the room. There was a note from Mr. Carroll, asking her to approve the fabric and informing her that his assistant would be by in the afternoon to pick it up and take it to his shop on Twenty-eighth Street. She didn’t have a mind for that, however; what she wanted, more than anything, was to talk to her father.

The letters Edward Holland had sent to his oldest child were kept in several of the small drawers in the great mahogany cabinet. She had received crisp white envelopes embellished with the stamps of Japan and South Africa and Alaska, and she kept them all in dated order, each month’s tied together with light blue ribbon. They were full of his quiet observations of foreign peoples and his carefully espoused principles of personal dignity. Her father had traveled a great deal, ostensibly on business, although really he had just wanted to see the world.

Elizabeth opened one of the cabinet drawers and pulled out a stack of letters. Even before he had passed, Elizabeth used to come here sometimes and pick a letter at random, looking for advice or wisdom. She needed that more than ever now, so she closed her eyes and ran the tip of her soft finger along the neatly opened edges of the stiff white envelopes. When she settled on one, she opened her eyes and saw her father’s long, slanting script. She pulled open the envelope, and reread the little note, which must have accompanied some gift or other.

“Remember always to be true,” she read his words in a whisper. “As true and honest as the girl I know.”

A creeping shame set in around her chest bone. So this, she knew instantly, was what her father would have said if he were here. She closed her eyes, and thought how little the words true and honest applied to her now. But perhaps she still had time to change all that.

Elizabeth turned and marched across the hall to the room that once was her father’s study, letter in hand. It was now the room where her mother went every morning, to look over their mounting bills and go through the papers as though she would somehow find a way to make them rich again. Elizabeth leaned her face against the door and knocked.

There was no answer. Elizabeth waited a moment and entered on timid feet. She saw her mother, a figure in black, behind the big oak desk with the burgundy leather top that her father once used. Her mother’s hair, which was always pinned in a dozen places, if not also covered with a hat, was completely loose. It was the same chestnut color as Diana’s, except streaked with white, and it streamed down her shoulders. She glanced up from her letter briefly and wished her daughter a good morning.

“Mother,” Elizabeth said as she tiptoed into the room.

“I’ve got to talk to you about this wedding.”

Her mother nodded for her to continue, but she kept her eyes on the letter in her hands.

“I have been thinking about what Father had wanted for us, about how he lived his life, and how he expected us to live ours. I was reading through his letters this morning, and I came across one in which he urged me to stay true and honest. And when I think about it, marrying Henry Schoonmaker would make me neither of those things.” Elizabeth waited for her mother to say something, but she barely even moved. “I think Father would have wanted me to marry for love,” she went on, in a shaky voice. “And though I am deeply flattered by Mr. Schoonmaker’s interest in me, and while I am very sensitive to his position in the world, I know I do not love him at all. I don’t think I will come to love him either.”

Mrs. Holland leaned back in her oak-and-leather chair, but still did not lift her eyes from the piece of paper to look at her daughter. She pressed her lips together, but otherwise remained completely still. Though she had never been a beauty, and had aged considerably since her husband’s death, Elizabeth could see the woman who must have so impressed Edward Holland when she was still Louisa Gansevoort. There was a particular authority in her every gesture.

“I suppose I should be happy that our servants are defecting, since I can no longer support them. Still, it is painful, especially when he was your father’s valet.”

Elizabeth was so stunned by this allusion to Will that she said the first thing that came into her head. “Mother, what are you reading?”

“It is a letter, child.”

“From who?”

“From Snowden Trapp Cairns, your father’s guide on his trips to Yukon Territory.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth had a vague memory of the gentleman from Boston, who had fair hair and nice manners, despite his mountaineering spirit. “Is it very interesting?”

Mrs. Holland finally put down the letter and looked up. Her eyes were dark and calm, and she assessed her daughter with an almost melancholy stare. “It would be very nice if you could marry for love, my child, and perhaps if your father had not gotten himself killed…” She paused, and the wrinkled skin around her mouth puckered. “But not now.”

“Killed?” The word stuck painfully in Elizabeth’s throat. All of her conviction drained away to make room for this newest misery. “But Father died in his sleep of a bad heart.”

Mrs. Holland threw up her hands. “That was the only way it was possible to tell the story to you girls…and to everyone.” Her eyes drifted sadly. “Your father was very young for his heart to fail, and Mr. Cairns tells me that there was some highly suspicious trading of claims, ones that your father had invested in around the time of his death. Those people are not gentlemen like the Hollands. Prospectors do not come from good families like ours. They are criminals, usually. And your father was caught up.”

Elizabeth thought she might be sick, and refocused all her energy on standing up straight and keeping the rising bile out of her throat.

“It doesn’t matter now, my Elizabeth. Your father made some very ill-advised gambles with his inheritance, I am afraid. He may have wanted you to marry for love, but he also would not have wanted his family to be destitute. Is that what you want? For your family to be destitute?”

Elizabeth shook her head in a slow, pained motion. She could feel the tears coming again, and already she felt like she had been crying for days.

“Good, because there is really only one thing to do. Your father would have wanted you to think of your family before yourself, Elizabeth. It is what our kind of people have always done.” She lifted her chin now, and her voice rose slightly to make her position clear: “You must marry Henry, Elizabeth. You will not be my child if you do not.”