Now he must apologise to Violet, but worse still, he must tell her the truth. It would not be easy to explain not only that he was in love with Mistral, but that he intended, when morning came, to ask her to be his wife.

He knew now that he had never been in love before, never even had begun to realise what it might mean in his life or to plumb the depths of which his emotions were capable.

Violet had attracted him, it was true. He had desired her almost from the first moment of their meeting, but it was she who had made their relationship a deeper and more intimate one. It was she who had led him further and further into a maze of his own passions and emotions until, when it was nearly too late, he had found the way of escape that was almost closed against him.

He had not meant it to be like that. He had intended nothing serious that first night at the Devonshire House Ball when impulsively he had written his name against every dance on Violet’s programme and flirted with her with the experienced sophistication of a man of the world.

It was later, much later, that he had begun to guess that Violet was falling in love with him, and it was only when his Mother’s reproaches and expostulations began to irritate him that in a kind of obstinate defiance he thought of asking Violet to be his wife.

By that time he had been infected with some of her contempt and indifference towards the conventional. Until he met Violet, he had always done exactly what was expected of him and behaved with a correctness and a formality which would have done credit to an older man. But after some weeks in Violet’s company he felt rebellion stir within him, a rebellion against the slanderous tongues of their friends who, anticipating evil, invariably forecast that it was an inevitable conclusion. If that was what was wanted, he would give them something to talk about, he decided.

But deep in his heart Sir Robert had known that Violet fell very far short of the ideal he had held secretly all his life of the woman who would be his wife. It had to be someone who would love Cheveron and who would be happy there, someone whom Cheveron would both love and accept.

He had known, even while he defied his mother and those who whispered about Violet, that they were right. He could not take to Cheveron a woman who had been divorced, he could not enthrone her there as an example to those on the estate who trusted and respected him.