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"You've just arrived. Daddy is still infatuated with you. You can afford to be blamed a little. They won't do anything to you," she explained. "I'm sorry," she said, scrubbing her hair with the towel. "I couldn't think of anything else to do and it worked. It got her off my back."

I sighed.

"We're sisters," she said, smiling. "We've got to help each other out sometimes."

"Not like this, Gisselle, not by lying," I protested.

"Of course by lying. How else? They're just little lies anyway," she said. I looked up sharply. That was just the way Daphne had put things too, little lies. Was this the foundation upon which the Dumas built their happiness and contentment: little lies?

"Don't worry," she said, "I'll smooth it out with Daddy if he seems too upset with you. I'll make it seem as if I encouraged you to encourage me and he'll just be so confused, he won't do anything to either of us. I've don

e that sort of thing before," she confessed with an oily and evil smile.

"Relax," she said, wrapping her towel around her nude body. "After you have your art lesson, we'll meet Beau and Martin and go down to the French Quarter. We'll have fun, I promise."

"But. . . what am I to do with this? I don't know where the liquor cabinet is."

"It's in the study. I'll show you," she said. "Come help me pick out something to wear."

I shook my head and sighed.

"What a morning this has been already. I told Nina about the sobbing I heard and she hurried me off into her room to burn brimstone and then this?'

"The sobbing?"

"Yes," I said, following her out to her closet. "I thought it came from the room that was Jean's."

"Oh," she said as if it were nothing.

"Have you heard it, too?"

"Of course I have," she said. "What about this skirt?" she asked, plucking one off its hanger and holding it against her. "It's not as short as your skirts, but I like the way it fits my hips. And so does Beau," she added, smiling licentiously.

"It's nice. What do you mean, of course you have heard the sobbing? Why of course?"

"Because it's something Daddy often does."

"What? What does he do?"

"He goes into Uncle Jean's room and cries about him. He's done that for . . . for as long as I can remember. He just can't accept the accident and the way things are."

"But he told me no one was crying in there," I said.

"He doesn't like anyone to know. We all pretend it doesn't happen," she explained. I shook my head sadly.

"It was tragic," I said. "He told me about it. Jean sounded like such a wonderful person, and to die that young with everything ahead of you--"

"Die? What do you mean, die? Did he say Uncle Jean died?"

"What? Well, I just . . . he said he was struck by the mast of the sailboat and. ." I thought for a moment, recalling the details. "And he became a vegetable, but I just assumed he meant . . ."

"Oh, no," she said. "He's not dead?'

"He's not? Well, what happened to him then?"

"He's a vegetable, but he's still quite goodlooking. He just walks around without a thought in his head and looks at everyone and everything as though he never saw them or remembered them."

"Where is he?"