Roderick squinted at her.

“I’ve never heard of that,” he said, with a defiant tip of his chin.

Except from Magnus, maybe – but those women were whores!

“We-- weren’t that close,” he admitted. “In age,” he quickly clarified. “Charles Darwin says that all these things happen for a reason,” he ventured, uncertainly, though the certainty seemed to materialize more thickly with each word. “That every species has natural selection. Magnus was picking off the undesirables, was he not?”

A thought seemed to cross his face.

“Dr. Witaker’s wife must have been hideous,” he decided aloud.

Hm. Which would imply Evelyn’s brother breaking legs was, too, a form of natural selection. Good thing Evelyn was made of stone.

When she thanked him, Roderick blinked.

“Oh,” he said dumbly. “You’re-” wait, manners were for equals, “uh, bound to get lost otherwise.”

He hovered awkwardly.