Vixen Volume 3 Chapter 5 - Crumpled Rose-Leaves

In which the absence of young Violet Tempest casts a quiet shadow over Abbey House, altering the lives and moods of those within and beyond its walls. Mrs. Winstanley, wrapped in a fragile affectation of illness and weighed by unspoken sorrows, retreats into a delicate world of societal pretence and solitary comforts, while her husband remains wistfully unaware of the deeper troubles that lurk beneath.