“That is what it is intended to be,” Thalia had replied. “Carver is a good old English name and doubtless it derives from the butchers who carve the meat.”

She had chosen it deliberately as being as near as possible to Caversham, knowing how hard it would be if she was asked quickly to remember not to give her real name.

Her mother had been as horrified by the subterfuge as she was by everything else that Thalia’s working entailed.

But Lady Caversham had, in her ignorance, thought that being in a ladies’ shop was at least some protection from the gentlemen who wandered up and down Bond Street looking for attractive women who frequented that street.

Mrs. Burton did not only sell bonnets, although they had become since Thalia’s arrival, her most important item of sale.

The milliners furnished everything to ladies that could contribute to or set off their beauty and, as some writer had said, ‘increase their vanity or render them ridiculous’.

Lady Caversham had no idea, nor had Thalia until she worked in a shop, how many gentlemen escorted the lady of their fancy when she went shopping or how many were expected to pay for what was purchased.

Mrs. Burton soon realised that Thalia was too attractive to serve the Society ladies who were accompanied by their rich lovers and always waited on them herself.

Thalia was at her best with women who were so plain and unattractive that it was doubtful if any man would look at them with or without an alluring bonnet.

The gentlemen lounged in chairs on the other side of the room while some fashionable beauty stared at her reflection in the mirror until the moment when she asked his approval, pouting her red lips as she did so.

‘They make me sick,’ Thalia said to herself. ‘If I was a man, I would be put off by all those stupid affectations.’

She came to the conclusion, however, that a great number of the gentlemen she saw in Mrs. Burton’s shop were as empty-headed as the women they escorted. And she noted critically the behaviour of both sexes.

Now, because she did not wish to go on talking about anything that might prove distressing or upsetting, she said to her mother,

“I am going to change, dearest, and then, when we have had supper, I am going to read to you from a book of Lord Byron’s poetry that has just been published.”

She saw Lady Caversham’s eyes light up and she explained,

“On the way back from Mademoiselle Genevieve’s this morning I stopped at Hatchards in Piccadilly and bought the book. I know you will enjoy it, Mama.”

“I am sure of it, dearest. But surely that was rather extravagant?”

“We can afford it,” Thalia replied.