Henrietta found a place where the embroidered hem of her sleeve was starting to come undone a bit and picked at it with one fingernail. She was looking at her sleeve rather than at him when she answered. "I don't know. I haven't really spoken to her. She's at home with Holden, and he —" she hesitated slightly, wondering if there was a kind way to phrase this. It had not felt particularly kind to her, when he had announced that she needed to leave the house for an indefinite period of time and would become the burden of Hermione in the meantime, but Mr. Greengrass was Holden's friend and she didn't want to speak poorly of him. Besides, it was probably for the best that she wasn't in the same home as Mama at the moment — and she was a burden, anyway. There was no other term for a debutante in mourning. She was incapable of doing anything useful for anyone, and could not even fulfill her primary purpose of husband-hunting until these black clothes went away.

" — sent me to my sister's," she continued with a melancholy shrug. "So mostly I hear things second-hand. And sometimes she speaks at these events, but that's just — generally speaking," she said with a slight wave of her hand. "Not speaking to me. Sometimes I don't know if she notices I'm there at all," she admitted. Which was for the best, because it wasn't as though Henrietta was eager to be caught in conversation with her, but at the same time it stung just a little bit. Even murdering her hadn't been enough to elevate Henrietta to a position of notice in her mother's eyes.

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