Lydia Wells—Anna Wetherell

Lydia Wells and Anna Wetherell’s relationship takes shape at the Wayfarer’s Fortune as a domestic alliance, a working partnership, and an intimacy shadowed by secrets. Lydia gives Anna a place to live and calls her an assistant; Anna, in turn, helps prepare the former hotel for a séance. Their shared work brings them close enough to develop private rhythms and familiar references, but not close enough to make Lydia’s past transparent or to erase the unequal terms on which she directs their enterprise.

A Household and a New Role

After the events of January 27, Lydia had not visited Aubert Gascoigne or received him for tea. Yet she and Anna had established a life together at the former hotel. Walter Moody glimpsed them hanging drapes in its front windows, their figures moving behind the glass. The scene offered an outside view of a relationship otherwise kept indoors: Lydia smiling and dusting her hands, Anna holding fabric pinned across the front of her dress. Moody found himself wanting to know what they were saying and what had made Anna blush and touch her cheekbone. His curiosity marks the household as something not readily legible to the people watching from outside.

The arrangement was more than temporary proximity. When Ah Sook assumed Anna might still be available for paid sexual services, Anna told him that she had stopped selling sex. Lydia explained her new position by calling her an assistant and saying that she lived there. Anna then affirmed both parts of the change in her own words: she lived at the house and no longer took opium. The exchange establishes Lydia’s home as a refuge from Anna’s former work and drug use, while also showing Anna publicly claiming her new circumstances for herself. Her insistence that she was no longer for sale makes clear that this is not simply a change of employer: she is drawing a boundary around the life she intends to leave behind.

Familiarity, Trust, and Unequal Authority

Their shared work is marked by an easy familiarity, but also by Lydia’s authority. When Anna hesitates over Lydia’s plans for the séance, Lydia reminds her of a recent disagreement about where to hang a print of the Bagatto. Anna had objected that the attic landing would cast the image in shadow; Lydia hung it as planned, and the light proved as she had predicted. Lydia uses the remembered episode to reassure Anna that her judgment is sound. The detail suggests a relationship built partly through ordinary decisions about their shared surroundings, and it shows Lydia turning a small success into an argument for trusting her direction now.

That direction has limits Anna does not simply accept. Lydia wants Ah Sook to sit as an exotic attraction at the séance, assigning him a theatrical role as an oracle or mystical figure because an “Oriental touch” will sell tickets. Anna observes that he has not yet consented. Her objection is brief but consequential: Lydia has already imagined the performance and its commercial appeal, while Anna brings the proposed participant’s choice into view. When Lydia makes Anna responsible for asking Ah Sook what fee he expects, Anna follows through. Ah Sook negotiates warily and agrees to one shilling, partly for Anna’s sake. The episode shows Anna acting as an intermediary, but not as a passive extension of Lydia’s will. Her concern for consent and compensation shapes the transaction even within a scheme designed to turn Ah Sook into a spectacle.

Shared Work and Unspoken Histories

The séance also exposes how much of Lydia’s life Anna does not know. Anna recognizes that Lydia and Ah Sook recognize each other, and infers that their shared history concerns Francis Carver. She understands, too, that Lydia does not want that history discussed aloud. Anna chooses not to press her. This restraint may preserve the working relationship, but it leaves its foundations partly concealed: Lydia’s past remains a subject Anna can notice without being invited to question.

Lydia’s treatment of Ah Sook further complicates the partnership. She positions him as a prop for the séance, appraises him from across the room, and wonders aloud whether a pipe would improve the visual effect. Anna again raises a practical limit, noting that he has not agreed to participate. Lydia does not dispute the point, but her attention remains fixed on the performance she wants to stage. When Anna says Ah Sook must be paid, Lydia gives her a chilly look, then has Anna conduct the negotiation. The moment reveals tension beneath their collaboration: Anna’s sense of obligation conflicts with Lydia’s appetite for staging and control. Their cooperation persists, but it does not mean they share the same standards or aims.

Parting and the Limits of Intimacy

After Ah Sook leaves, Lydia says she is going out and will return in about an hour. Anna is astonished, then closes her expression and latches the door behind her. Instead of simply accepting Lydia’s explanation, she watches through a narrow opening, expecting that Lydia may turn back to seek a private conversation with Ah Sook. Lydia does not. Ah Sook heads south toward the river, while Lydia walks north and enters a building near Tiegreen’s Hardware and Supply. Anna recognizes it as the Palace Hotel and concludes that Lydia has gone to visit a man of consequence.

Anna’s observation does not resolve Lydia’s hidden history; it sharpens the sense that her life contains rooms Anna cannot enter. The watchful pause at the door echoes Moody’s earlier wish to hear the women talking behind the drapes: both scenes frame their relationship through partial access, visible gestures, and withheld explanations. At the same time, Anna is not merely an object of Lydia’s protection. She has a home, a role, and a voice in how their work treats others. The relationship is therefore neither uncomplicated rescue nor full equality. It is a provisional alliance in which shelter and shared labor create closeness, while Lydia’s secrets and Anna’s increasingly clear limits keep that closeness unsettled.