It is no excuse that I was beyond myself.

⟪ She says it so casually, but that, too, is a habit. The walls have ears where she is from, and eyes, too, and any truth shared with a voice turned to too much of a whisper will surely be followed with twice the attentiveness. So her tone is that of pleasant conversation, even as the subject has been changed, or half-changed. ⟫

You ought to visit more, of course. It won't do to spend so much time by yourself, and meals taste better with company.

⟪ Tybolt, meanwhile, got himself heartily stuck in a badly misjudged pile of snow, and she bends to free him from it – evidently a practiced move. ⟫