She must, she thought, have loved her lover very deeply to have left her luxurious home in Florence for such a strange way of life.

But now, at one of the small houses at the far end of Shepherd’s Market, Hannah had stopped and drawn a large key from a pocket in her sensible black skirt.

She opened the door and Thalia ran past her to call as she hurried up a narrow staircase,

“Mama, I am back!”

She opened a door and entered what would have been a drawing room if such a tiny building could boast of anything so pretentious.

It was now converted into a bedroom and, lying on a chaise longue in front of the window, was a woman who still retained her beauty although she looked frail and ill.

She held out both hands to her daughter and Thalia ran across the room to kiss her on both cheeks.

“I am back, Mama, and I have so much to tell you. Have you been very dull here all day?”

“I have been all right, my dearest,” her mother replied softly. “But I admit to waiting impatiently for your return. You seem to bring the sunshine with you.”

“That is what I would like to bring,” Thalia said, “but instead I have brought you something that will make you laugh and will purchase food, which is more important at the moment, than the sunshine.”

She drew the guinea from her purse as she spoke and held it up for her mother to see.

“My first tip,” she declared, “and from a Gentleman of Fashion.”

Her mother gave a little gasp.

“You cannot mean, Thalia, that you actually accepted money from a man?”

Thalia laughed.

She was taking off her concealing bonnet and now she flung it down on a chair and patted her golden hair, which had tiny red lights in it, into place.

“I admit, Mama, I felt like throwing it at him, but then I remembered that I was a humble milliner.”

Her mother gave a little groan.

“Oh, Thalia, how can I bear to think of you working in such conditions and being treated as if you were nothing more than a servant?”

“That is exactly what I am,” Thalia said. “But, Mama, it was such fun today! If you only saw the women who came in to buy bonnets.”

She gave a little laugh at the remembering them and went on,

“One looked exactly like a cottage loaf and her face was as big as a pumpkin. She kept saying to me, ‘do you really think I look pretty in this?’ I longed to tell her she could not look pretty in anything!”

“I hope you did nothing of the sort!” her mother said reprovingly. “That would be unkind.”

“No, of course not, Mama. I told her she looked charming and persuaded her to buy three bonnets instead of two. Mrs. Burton was delighted with me.”