It's gone, all gone. It isn't where she put it; she searches frantically, as that ragged hole inside of her gets deeper; the drug was a fist she staunched the bleeding inside, the first of its kind. Now what will she do? Her bedroom is a mess of upturned drawers, sheets on the floor. And she is back to losing, the pain creeping back like tall, dark shadows. Her saviour gone and feelings creep in, suffocating vines without mercy.

The razor blade glints in the setting autumn sun. In the courtyard, they are coming to get her. She can see the men in medical coats, their faces white circles that convey nothing; she has to hurry. They will take her away and she will never see the light of day and it is better to die on her own terms than to to die by fading away.

But she didn't even know they knew … she was too far-gone to notice the subtlest changes in their demeanours and the way they said too times, "Are you quite alright Edith?" as she fell deeper and deeper into the abyss of her own mind.

Daisy knew the package from Thomas was missing, but the weeks passed and it was if she had never obtained it in the first place. But just when it seemed things were secure, there was Edith floating down the halls like a spectre with her pupils the size of dinner-plates, before she began to hear the question from everyone, "What was wrong with Lady Edith?" And she knew it was her fault, a blame that seemed to seize up inside of her until she was not sure she could quite breathe, because she knew the dire mistake she had made. She left the package in Edith's room, albeit, unintentionally, but still. Edith was sad and desperate and ready to take chances.

So Daisy makes the only decision she knows may save the life of the girl upstairs, who she has never known beyond a searing pity. She finds Lord Grantham in the library, and in his presence she feels small and silly and perhaps even inconsequential. She knows she only has a short time and needs to be concise. This is her once chance.

She leaves out the fact that the drugs were hers; and although Lord Grantham has turned very pale, Daisy has been set free. Tonight she will sleep without guilt.

Edith couldn't do it; she couldn't bring the blade to her wrist, and unable to die, she was left to shiver, frightened, a coward, as the men in the white coats stormed up the stairs. She did not put up a fight and they took her away by the elbows; downstairs, her mother was crying and her father was stony-faced but there was pain, she could see it. Mary showed little emotion and Matthew nodded in her direction, as if in conciliation. Dear Sybil would have been kind, but she, like everything else important in Edith's life was lost, sacrificed to the great unknown.

Edith looks into each of their faces, before the men guide her through the great front doors, and toward a life she cannot conceive of.