Some days and nights passed. Lucy and Mr. Olderglough sat with the Baron, together and separately, feeding him and speaking with him and leading him away from his manias the way a child might be led away from a carnival. One morning Lucy entered the Baron’s chambers and found the man was no longer manacled, but sitting upright in his bathtub, and his hair had been cut, his scraggly beard shaven, revealing a handsomely angular face. He was reading the letter the Baroness had written with a look of horror.
“Are you not pleased that she’s returning, sir?” Lucy asked.
The Baron folded the letter and set it upon the side table. “All I know, boy, is that life is, on occasion, entirely too vast for my tastes.” Here he submerged himself, and afterward did a great many bubbles rise up from the depths of the bathtub, this due to the fact of the Baron screaming underwater.