Last Rites
- In the last few days of her life, Cassandra keeps seeing a shadow hovering above her. She refers to it as the Thing, but it's obviously death, waiting patiently to take her away.
- The feel of the house has changed, and there are kinder people moving around and taking care of Cassandra. She even has a nice doctor who has come to help her, though he can't cure her.
- Her fever breaks, and she has the wherewithal to call a lawyer so she can fix up her will, leaving everything to Lizzie Rose and Parsefall. She also leaves the gatehouse to Clara.
- In her last days, Cassandra is also aware that the dog stays with her all the time, sleeping with her in the bed and comforting her whenever she wakes up.
- Parsefall decides one day that they should put on a puppet show for Cassandra since she doesn't have anything to do in bed all day. He thinks she must be pretty bored.
- The children put on the skeleton puppet show for Cassandra and she loves it, though she notices that Clara looks miserable as she watches. She realizes that the girl is jealous and wants to perform, too. So, she tells Clara to dance for her.
- Clara says no, and Cassandra says she can tell Clara is punishing herself for something and that she knows Clara feels guilty so she isn't doing the things that she really enjoys.
- That's when Clara confesses and says that she's the one to blame for her brother's death. She didn't want to eat the watercress that day, so she asked Charles Augustus to eat it for her.
- Cassandra starts laughing when Clara finishes her story and tells the girl that she's being ridiculous. She didn't kill her brother on purpose—she just neglected to eat the greens that killed all of her other siblings.
- She points out that if Clara had eaten the watercress, then her parents would have lost every single one of their children, which would have been so much worse.
- Then, she commands Clara to dance, and Lizzie Rose starts playing the fiddle to accompany her. Clara dances, and everyone claps and is delighted … but at the very end, Cassandra falls over.
- The children are horrified, but Cassandra feels at peace because she's finally done something good in her life—she has left these kind children an inheritance and has freed Clara from the guilt she's carried around all these years.
- Then, the dark shadow comes for Cassandra and she dies.