Pippa San Severiano

In the novel They do it with Mirrors, Pippa San Severiano was the mother of Gina Hudd, and the adopted daughter of Carrie Louise and Eric Gulbrandsen. She died at childbirth. Pippa was married to an Italian man.

Pippa's birth mother was Katherine Elsworth, a woman who was hanged for administering arsenic to her husband. When Eric and Carrie Louise adopted Pippa, only they and their friend Dr Galbraith, knew who her birth mother was. They determined to give her a fresh start, with love and care, and all the things a child needed to succeed. Carrie Louise felt that they had succeeded, as Pippa was the "sweetest, happiest creature imaginable". As a child, she was pretty, dark, and lively.

Trivia
In some Swedish translations, or at least the one made by Siri Thorngren Olin in the 1950s, the character is renamed Pips. This is perhaps due to the cause that in Swedish Pippa is a slang word meaning to have sexual intercourse.