‘For me?’ Mistral said in surprise.

‘Yes, for you,’ Emilie repeated, ‘for everything you wear, every gown, every cloak, will be in just that colour – fantóme grey.

But, Aunt Emilie, I shall look like a ghost!’ Mistral exclaimed.

‘Exactly!’ Emilie said. ‘You will look like a ghost – a ghost in Monte Carlo.’

2

Sir Robert Stanford shut the door of the Villa quietly behind him and stood for a moment looking out towards the sea.

It had been a brilliant night, but now the moon was but an echo of herself and already there was the first faint glow in the east which foretold that the dawn was not far away. The sea breeze was rising, too, and Sir Robert, feeling it on his face, drew a sudden deep breath as if its sharp astringency revived and invigorated him. He was in fact experiencing that acute sensibility which comes to a man in the very early hours of the morning when, having satiated his physical desires and exhausted his body, his spiritual needs stand revealed clearly and by an intuitive sixth sense.

Behind him in the quietness of the Villa des Roses was a warm scented darkness, exotic, clinging, enveloping, but out here the air, while sweet with the fragrance of mimosa and orange blossom, was curiously stimulating.

Sir Robert threw back his head and looked up at the sky, then again he looked at the garden before him, at the steps leading down from the villa amid a profusion of plants and shrubs, their colours, dimmed by the night, awaiting only the rising sun to reveal them in their almost oriental splendour.

Yet strangely enough, as he looked, Sir Robert saw not the loveliness of the Mediterranean landscape but the parkland and the smooth green lawns of his home in Northamptonshire. He could see it very clearly at this moment – the grey house set like a jewel in the midst of its terraces, its roofs and chimneys silhouetted against a clear sky, its architectural perfection reflected on one side by a lake over which one had to pass to reach the pillared portico. It was a magnificent house, a home of which any man might be proud, but why the dawn breeze blowing across the Mediterranean should remind him of Cheveron he did not know.

Yet it was as if it stood there in front of him, silently accusing him, wordlessly demanding from him an explanation, and as all men do in a moment of weakness, Sir Robert began to excuse himself.

Why, he argued, should he be tied to a house, to a name, a heritage, however noble, however fine? He would live his life his own way. Why not? He was old enough to know his own mind!