She had to give him the benefit of the doubt – whatever people said, whatever made most sense – it was only polite. And politeness, not truthfulness, after all, was an enduring bastion of society. “But that leaves him quite at liberty to find his own path there,” she countered optimistically, sure that that was truer of Lysander’s case than her own. She could not imagine that August – mentally, she shook her head; Mr. Echelon-Arnost – would impress too many gross expectations on the boy that would stifle him. (Not that her family had done so, at least not knowingly – but Callista had taken the weight of everything they said onto her shoulders too readily anyway, and had felt a growing failure, a disappointment in the family, all the same.) “Although I’m sure he looks up to you more than anyone, so perhaps he will follow in your footsteps?”

She did not know the boy enough to judge the chances of that, or how alike they were, whether he would be in the same house his guardian had been, or would graduate one day with an interest in the law, but she could only imagine they shared the same core principles.

Her face might have gone wistful without her noticing, with a slight pang in her stomach at this conversation – if only because Callista had always looked forward to the idea of having children of her own and watching them grow up. It was one thing she felt that she might actually be good at, and a safe kind of love to have, except... well, clearly, she still had a few major hurdles to overcome before she got there. If she got there.)

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