Caitriona is very much a woman constrained—by her status as a widow, by her poverty and her fall from high society, even by the clothes she wears. In our introduction to her, on the novel's first page, Beatrice Colin writes, "She had laced tight that morning, pulling until the eye holes in her corset almost met, and now her chest rose and fell in shallow gasps as she tried to catch her breath--in, out, in and out." Were you therefore surprised by how her story turned out?