Always, all through her grown up life since she had discovered her power over men, Violet had been the one to tire first. Men had found her irresistible. It was she who exhausted their talents and their charm to the point where each became just another familiar face and one which inevitably began to bore her. Never had she had to fight and scheme to keep a man in love when once his heart had been laid at her feet. It had all been so easy. She had merely to smile and he was enraptured, she had merely to beckon and he followed her eagerly – too eagerly at times to make the effort worthwhile.

But Robert Stanford was different. She had known that from the first moment when they were introduced at a ball. He asked her for a dance, then said quietly,

‘Why have we not met before?’

She looked up into his face and knew only too well what he was feeling, with a tumult of excitement the quiet, conventional question covered. She, too, was wondering how life had continued for so long without him, how anything could have seemed amusing or gay when he was not there. She had known then, as the music started and he held out his arms, that she was surrendering herself to far more than an invitation to a waltz.

And she had determined that night, when they had danced tirelessly until the dawn, that she would marry him.

She had not thought of anything save her own desire for Robert and of his for her. She had not known at first how rich and important he was. She had known nothing of his family, of the famous house that he owned or of his vast circle of friends.

She had heard of Cheveron, of course, for it was as much a part of England as Windsor Castle, but she had not realised or else had forgotten to whom it belonged, and she had not for a moment visualised what an important part it was to play in her life.

Often when she and Robert were together and she was striving to bewitch him and make him utterly and completely her captive, she had thought it was only Cheveron which stood between her and her goal. Robert talked of his home so often that she knew full well that it was not only the background of his life but a very part of it. It was Cheveron which fought her, Cheveron which stood for all the things she could never give him – respectability, local prestige, the respect of his own class, the admiration of his employees, and more than that, much more than that – children.