THEY GAVE HER THE SERVANTS' TABLE — HE MOVED HIS OWN SEAT BESIDE HERS

THEY GAVE HER THE SERVANTS' TABLE — HE MOVED HIS OWN SEAT BESIDE HERS The color of invisibility was a pale, watery grey. It was the color of my dress, the color of the wall I was pressed against, the color of the very air around me, thick with conversations that never included my name. My stepmother, Lady Beatrice, had a particular genius for this kind of cruelty. It was never a loud, theatrical banishment that might draw unwanted sympathy. It was a quiet, surgical excision, performed with a smile. Tonight, at the annual Hartwell Gala, her scalpel was particularly sharp."Eleonora, dear," she had said, her voice like honey laced with ground glass, "the main tables are so frightfully crowded. You wouldn't be comfortable. We've found a much quieter spot for you. You do so prefer the quiet, don't you?"The 'quieter spot' was a small, round table tucked into an alcove near the kitchens, a place meant for the hired musicians during their break, or perhaps a lady’s companion who had been forgotten. It was a table for the superfluous. For the invisible. My sister, Rosalind, resplendent in silk the color of a summer dawn, had given me a fleeting, pitying look before being swept away by a throng of admirers. My father, a man long since hollowed out by my stepmother’s will, had simply avoided my gaze. He had mastered the art of not seeing what was inconvenient.