Chapter 7 Summary

Beatrice Nest has been editing Ellen Ash's journals for a very long time with no end in sight. In the 1950s and 1960s, Beatrice's students think of her as motherly. In later years, her students assume she is a lesbian. As she gets older, she is stereotyped as threatening because of her size. Roland visits Beatrice and asks if she knows if Ellen Ash ever said anything about Christabel LaMotte. She finds a reference that Ellen read The Fairy Melusina in 1872. Roland asks if he can read Ellen's journal entries on it, and Beatrice allows it if he does not leave her office. Cropper shows up to take Beatrice to lunch, and Roland is left alone. He discovers that Ellen thoroughly enjoyed reading Melusina and felt that the general public would probably not recognize Christabel's genius.

Roland goes back to his apartment and...