“Nobody – it is not – like that, it is something – very different.”

“Will you tell me the reason why you need this money?”

“I cannot do so – although I want to – but it’s a secret.”

“The secret you thought that I had discovered last night?”

“Y-yes.”

“And, as you said, it concerns someone else.”

“Y-yes.”

For a moment the Earl did not speak and Thalia said desperately,

“Please – don’t ask questions – I cannot answer them. It’s impossible – but I have to have the money – and if you will not give it to me – I don’t know to whom I can – turn or where I can – go.”

The Earl looked down at her and now her eyes were beseeching his and he saw too that there was a terror in their depths that had not been there before, the terror of fear that he might refuse her.

“I will give you the money,” the Earl said quietly.

He knew by the way Thalia drew in her breath how afraid she had been that he would not.

“I suppose,” he went on, “you would not wish for a cheque, because it would bear my name.”

“No, no! It must be in – notes!”

“Very well,” the Earl replied. “Just wait here.”

He walked from the room as he spoke, and Thalia, as if her legs would no longer hold her, sank down in a chair and put her hands up to her face.

He would help her and her father would be safe!

For a moment she could think of nothing else, not even of what she had promised in order to obtain the money.

All that mattered was that her mother must never know and her father could come home safely.

She realised how petrified she had been that the Earl would refuse to give her the money immediately and say instead that she could earn it as time passed.

Had he done that, it would have been like hanging on a cliff’s edge, wondering every moment of the day whether her father would arrive in England before the debt was paid only to be arrested as he stepped off the ship.

‘He will be safe now – safe,’ she told herself and tried not to think of anything else except of her mother’s happiness and that soon they would all be together again.

The door opened and the Earl came back into the room.

He held nothing in his hands and for the moment, almost like a stab of a dagger, Thalia wondered if he had changed his mind and perhaps would tell her that it was impossible to give her the money after all.

Almost as if he sensed what she was feeling, he said,

“My secretary is getting what you require. Fortunately we always keep quite a considerable sum of money here in the safe. While we are waiting, I am going to insist that you have a glass of wine.”