‘No, Mistral, we are not. You are staying here and in these rooms until dinner time, then you shall make an appearance.’

‘But, Aunt Emilie – ’

There was no reproach, just utter consternation in the young voice.

‘Now, Mistral, do not argue. I have told you that you must obey me, that I have my reasons for whatever decisions I make.’

‘But not to go out, our first day in Monte Carlo!’

Emilie’s lips tightened.

‘We are staying here for some time. Tomorrow we will inspect the place, not that I imagine there is a great deal to see. Today we shall not appear until the hour for dinner.’

Mistral knew what that inflexible quality of determination in Emilie’s voice meant.

She sighed.

She knew it was no use asking her to change her mind.

‘Aunt Emilie,’ she said after a long pause, ‘there is something I want to ask you.’

‘What is it?’

‘Why was I christened Mistral? I have often wondered and have often meant to ask you.’

‘Your mother chose the name. She chose it because she hated the wind that blows here along the shore.’

‘Because she hated it?’ Mistral echoed. ‘Then my mother came here? She knew Monte Carlo?’

‘Yes, your mother came here,’ Emilie said grimly, ‘but she did not know Monte Carlo. It was not built nineteen years ago.’

‘Nineteen years ago,’ Mistral repeated. ‘Then she was here just before I was born. Oh, Aunt Emilie, how exciting! Did she love it? Perhaps that is why it seems so beautiful and wonderful to me, because my mother liked it when she was here.’

‘I have not said your Mother liked it,’ Emilie replied. ‘When she told me what your name was to be, she said, “It will be a girl and I want her to be called Mistral. That terrible wind, I can hear it still. Yes, call her Mistral”.’

‘Why did she say that?’ Mistral asked, ‘and if she said it before I was born, how was she certain that I would be a girl? I might have been a boy.’

She seemed very sure that you would be a girl,’ Emilie said briefly.

Even as she spoke, she could see Alice’s haunted eyes. They had worn the same look when she had chosen the name Mistral as when she had said to Emilie,

‘You are not to tell him! Swear on the Bible that you will never tell him that I am to have a child.’

She could hear Alice’s voice, almost hysterical with fear. She could see her face, white and haunted, and she had promised because at that moment there was nothing she would not have done to soothe her distress. But afterwards how bitterly she had regretted, not once but many times, that promise which had been given on the Bible.