Don Juan frowned slightly. He knew which woman she meant, but hadn't expected her societal downfall to be a relevant topic of conversation at a moment like this. Elfrieda Yaxley hadn't brought her up by accident. Maybe she was trying to communicate something to him, or maybe she wasn't quite conscious of the message she was sending, but it clearly wasn't a coincidence that such a theme was on her mind. So now his task in formulating his response was to address both the words she'd actually said and what lay beneath them... but then, they'd been talking in double meanings all day.

"Perhaps not entirely uncontroversial," he remarked. "They did choose to display it in the library rather than the ballroom. But that's always the way of these things — everyone likes to think they have a secret, even if really their secret is the same as everyone else's. The crime of the woman with the fallen shoulder strap was that the gallery display was too public for everyone to pretend not to notice, the way they usually do," he continued. "Or that's my speculation, anyway. I didn't see it, but I find it hard to imagine a shoulder so hideous it would see one ousted from society." This last was intended to lighten the mood; dwelling on the fate of fallen women was not going to lead this interaction in the direction he'd been hoping.

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