Carol read the invitation again. “Carol Higgins plus one.” She sobbed gently into her bedside handkerchief.
Did Lord Henry not think her adequate anymore? This business of mathematics had been sweeping the academic institutions and intellectual circles for some time, but for it now to infect the social ranks with its additions and subtractions? It was all too much.
How does one even ADD to one’s self? Must one visit a doctor or, worse, a shaman to achieve such a thing? When she was a girl, it was enough to be simply Carol Higgins, but it was now obvious that the demands of society proper had surpassed her capabilities.
Carol kissed her portrait of Lord Henry one last time as she tightened the noose around her twiggish neck. As she kicked the chair out from underneath, a folded note slipped out of her hand to the floor below, landing with the dainty whisper of a lady page.
In thin calligraphy, it read “Carol Higgins minus one.”
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