My friendship with Isabel came to an end when Hugh Cholmeley died suddenly that spring. Soon after being widowed, Isabel was snapped up by a Venetian count and made hurried plans to move north. I was not only envious of her, but bereft. Isabel had been the source of my social life, a fellow artist, and a sympathetic friend apart from any involvement in abolitionism or interest in exploiting me as a novelty. The aching emptiness that opened inside me, familiar from every loss I’d experienced, left me feeling as hollow as a plaster cast, with no heart to feel and no lungs to take breath. I despised myself for being so well acquainted with loneliness.

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