Lady Violet in contrast at thirty-six was in the full bloom of her good looks. She had never been a great beauty, but she had something of more value – charm and an attraction which drew men to her and made them lose both their heads and their hearts if she so much as smiled at them. She had always been fêted and courted from the moment she had made her début into Society, and it was entirely due to a disinterested and self-centred mother that she had been allowed to marry one of the first men who proposed to her, because she wished to escape the confining boredom of her home life.

As a child Lady Violet had longed to live fully. Life for her in later years meant one continuous whirl of thrills, excitements and sensations.

Brought up in the wilds of Lincolnshire, for the Duke and Duchess believed in keeping their family in the country while they enjoyed themselves in London, Violet rebelled against the monotony of dull governesses and even duller lessons and against the selfishness of her parents, who thought that children were fortunate if they had three good meals a day and a bed to sleep in and were entitled to no other consideration.

But being a rebel was disconcertingly ineffective until at eighteen Violet was taken to London for her first Season and was presented at Court. Up till that date she had met few men, and in welcome contrast to the local Parson, who was nearly eighty, and the local M.F.H., who was married with six children, Eric Featherstone seemed a veritable Don Juan.

Realising, too, that when her short season in London was ended she would be sent back to Lincolnshire and forgotten until the following year, Violet had accepted Eric, believing herself quite genuinely to be in love with him.

How mistaken she was she learned shortly after her marriage, but as a young married woman with a quite considerable fortune at her disposal she took the social world by storm. She was so gay and amusing that she managed to make herself charming and acceptable to the women as well as captivating to the men. It was only after some years of social triumphs that Violet began to wish for new things to do, for fresh amusements and other fields to conquer.

Unfortunately there were no children to draw her and her husband closer together, and she quickly found that he was pleasant and good-natured but very dull, and that he had few interests in life other than fishing, shooting and hunting, which he did conventionally year after year with the same friends and in the same places.

Eric Featherstone hated change of any sort. To Violet it became the breath of life. She wanted something new to stimulate her, something fresh about which she could be enthusiastic, eager and excited, something novel over which she could argue and take sides.