"the dread of superior beauty urged her to prolong Blanche's seclusion"

Alas! I've had an upcropping of real life to distract me from adventures. It isn't done yet! Tomorrow I score a 5k road race for a charity. Runners are so persnickety about their times and personal bests and all that and they wouldn't appreciate that I was reading rather than keeping track of their times.

So we've left Emily mid-escape (I know!!!! WTF?) and we still don't know what is behind the black curtain that terrified her so much.

I don't know what happened, where Emily is, or if she got away, because suddenly we are back in France at the chateau that creeped the locals out where the sainted St. Aubert (who should never work in child placement services) died. This place.

There we meet the new owner's family. He is a count. His daughter is named Blanche.
Blanche is a beautiful young woman who loves nature.

She has lived a secluded life (in a convent put there because her stepmother was jealous of her beauty) and is therefore all goodness and light and such.

And she has a vain and stupid woman (her stepmother) who doesn't like her and takes every chance to make her miserable.

Oh and Blanche writes poetry, so we get treated to stanza on stanza about a butterfly.

Wait a minute.... All this sounds really familiar. Like a variation of another character in the story...

Not sure where Emily and her little band of escapees fit in yet. Hope she is okay. And at least while running, she can't stop to write poetry!... I hope. Maybe lack of poetry opportunities is why Radcliffe put Blanche in.