“You know what it is to be on the fringes of everything—to see that others have what you lack, for nothing more than an accident of birth,” she said. “I suppose my scheme sounds wild enough, and perhaps no one will marry me after all, for fear of what my colour might signify. But I must try, or spend the rest of my life a lady’s maid, working petty magics as it suits my betters—and that would not suit me at all!”
