The wretched Orpha is dead, a victim of her own low morals. The story of her demise, which our family was able to beat out of the other servants, proceeds thusly: whilst under quarantine for typhoid two months past she copulated with a similarly uncultivated cottar, also suffering from typhoid. As a result of her dalliance with this raffish lad she found herself in a most deplorable condition. She requested a forenoon's furlough from serving me; after lashing her soundly with a willow switch for her impudent transgression of soliciting a favor, I granted her the mercy she sought. Unbeknownst to me, she journeyed to the squalid tenements of lower Man-hattan to seek the assistance of an Irish madame in extracting the results of her licentiousness from her womb. What horrific and sullied conditions met her on the operating table, I do not care to contemplate, but 'twas nothing she did not fully deserve.
She returned at tea-time appearing more ill than usual, with a verdant hue to her skin. I again lashed her for not being present to place silk slippers on my pedal extremities, as is my habit when I am taking my imported Darjeeling and crumpets with Devon cream and candied violets. Instead of merely whimpering, which is her usual reaction to beatings, she slumped to the floor unconscious! I had the manservants, Elbert and Lemuel, carry her nearly lifeless body to the servants' quarters behind the Armagnac cellar. When, morning next, Minnie went to inquire as to how she was getting on, she found that the wretched Orpha O'Callaghan, my maidservant for 21 years, had succumbed to injuries incurred at the hands of the insalubrious Irishwoman.
I trust I do not need to expound on the reasons for my wrath over Orpha's slightly untimely demise (she was all of 22, which is seven whole years prior to the average lifespan for a girl of her class and ethnicity.) I am livid at the prospect of sailing on the R.M.S. Titanic, the society event of the year (nay, perhaps the decade), sans a maid to attend to the refinement of my natural beauty and to comfort me when I encounter life's minor calamities. I am able to take solace in knowing that she met her quietus justly.
Instruments and tinctures that led to Orpha's demise.
