The World Well Lost

They stiffened but lay still together,
the room reeked of blood. At sunrise,
the maid found them and informed
the lady of the house. She was thirty,
very pretty, and most disturbed by

the position of her husband, held
by the arms of his butler: companion,
dear friend. She deemed it suicide,
perhaps a murder, but no struggle
was apparent in the placement
of the sheets around their bodies

or hands still entwined. The lady,
counting pride, dignity, and money
on the same fingers, hatched a plan
with the maid to have them moved
so their deaths appeared separate
or the result of an armed dispute,

remembering the eve of their union,
when she knew but was promised
alongside a handsome stock
of her father's wealth,

his good family name.