Mrs. Baker continues Kit McDeere’s tour of Hope’s End and explains the reduced staff: Carter handles the grounds, Jessica cleans, and Archibald cooks. Mrs. Baker makes clear that she runs the household and that her authority is final. She also reveals that she first came to Hope’s End in 1928 as tutor to Lenora Hope and her sister, left after the murders, and later returned after her fiance’s death to devote herself to Lenora’s care.

In the kitchen, Kit meets Archibald, who prepares all meals, and then follows Mrs. Baker up the servants’ stairs to the second floor. There, Kit learns stricter rules. Lenora never goes outside, doctors must come to her, and Mrs. Baker insists Lenora will die in the house where she was born. As they move through the upper hallway, Kit feels the mansion’s dangerous tilt toward the ocean and realizes the cliff erosion is physically destabilizing the house.

Mrs. Baker shows Kit her room and orders her to change into a traditional nurse’s uniform. Kit resists because she is not a nurse, but Mrs. Baker says the household keeps the old customs and that a change would upset Lenora. Once dressed, Kit feels foolish at first, but the uniform also briefly restores some of her confidence and sense of professional purpose.

Mrs. Baker then brings Kit into Lenora Hope’s bedroom. Kit is struck by the room’s resemblance to Lenora’s portrait downstairs, the dramatic ocean view, and the frail old woman sitting in an antique wheelchair. Lenora appears almost colorless except for her vivid green eyes. Kit approaches nervously, haunted by Lenora’s murderous reputation, but when Kit introduces herself and offers to care for her, Lenora studies her with curiosity, nods, and smiles, suggesting an immediate and meaningful connection.

After that first meeting, Lenora begins directing Kit to write down her story. Lenora says she does not want pity or exoneration, only a truthful record before she dies. She begins with the day her birthday portrait was painted, eight months before the murders. Teenage Lenora describes being watched by Miss Baker, infatuated with the artist Peter Ward, irritated by her sister’s flirtation, and desperate to escape the suffocating house and family dynamics.

Lenora’s account expands into a portrait of Hope’s End as a cold prison built to glorify her father, not to shelter a happy family. She describes her mother’s nervous isolation, her own longing for life beyond the estate, and a cruel game in which her father locked Lenora and her sister in their rooms from the outside to test who could endure confinement longest. Because Lenora always lost, she came to associate the house with panic and entrapment, and she ends by comparing that childhood imprisonment to her present existence trapped in her room and disabled body.