Rose Daughter
“Her father gripped Jeweltongue’s shoulder; Mr Whitehand stood close at her side. Mrs Words-Without-End said: “It is only a silly tale, the silliest of tales. I forgot myself in the pleasure of your father’s reading of his most romantic poem. It is all nonsense, of course, as silly tales are—”
Jeweltongue said, stiffly, as if she were very cold: “And the ghost? You never told us who the ghost is.”
“Yes!” said several voices at once. “Who is the ghost?”
Mrs Words-Without-End said to Jeweltongue: “The ghost is the ghost of the simulacrum. Sometimes she is nothing but a breath of the scent of a rose on the air, especially in winter. Sometimes you can just see her, but often only as a kind of shadow, a silhouette, of a woman with long hair, holding a rose to her breast, as if its stem grew from her heart. I saw her often when I was a little girl—I had seen her several times before my grandmother told me the story—and then it was as if she went away, oh, for twenty years or more.
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