‘I – have – ’ Mistral began, but stopped as Robert’s hand closed on her wrist like a vice.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Go down on your knees, here and now, and swear before all that you hold sacred that the woman whom you call your aunt is not Madame Bleuet. Swear it!’

But – I think that she – ’ Mistral stammered.

‘Then she is!’

The words seemed to burst from Robert’s lips, and the expression on his face made Mistral’s hesitating voice die away into silence.

‘She is!’ he repeated. ‘Then the Rajah was right and I, too, have nearly been deceived by you! I believed in you. I thought that you were all that you pretended to be. I even asked you to marry me, God help me. But don’t deceive yourself, I am not caught as yet. It was a trick, a very clever one, but it has failed. I have been saved just in time, and saved by a man I thought was my enemy. Go back to your so called aunt and tell her that she has made a mistake, tell her that I have unmasked you for what you are – a dirty, lying little trickster. I loathe you and all your kind. I hope I never set eyes on you again.’

He turned away without looking at Mistral.

She stood very still as if turned to stone, the blood slowly receding from her cheeks until she was paler than death, her eyes dark pools of pain.

The carriage was drawn up at the foot of the steps. Robert jumped into it. He gave an order to the coachman in a loud, sharp voice and the horses started off.

He did not look back, did not see Mistral put out a quivering, trembling hand towards him as if she would beg him to stop.

She could not speak, her voice had died in her throat.

She could only stand staring piteously after the carriage, which grew smaller and smaller until the distance swallowed it up.

14

Mistral stood very still on the steps of the Chapel for a long time, then at last slowly, as if someone had hit her across the face, she raised her hand to her cheek. Her brain would not function properly, she could neither sort out nor stem the flood of chaotic questions which repeated themselves again and again in her mind.

There were no tears in her eyes, she was just numb, stunned and shocked as a person might be who has been involved in a terrible accident or who has received a violent blow. Over and over she turned the problem of what had happened to alter Robert so completely and instantaneously.