Her prayers finished, Mistral rose and walked down the aisle. Jeanne was sitting waiting for her in a back pew. She found it hard to kneel for her rheumatism had been troubling her these past few days, and so, when they went to the Chapel together, she waited for Mistral at the back where she could sit unobserved.

Jeanne rose and joined Mistral and after crossing themselves with Holy Water they went through the porch into the bright sunshine. For a moment Mistral’s eyes were dazzled and she could only blink in the hot afternoon sunshine, then she was aware that someone was coming up the steps towards her and that waiting in the roadway was an open carriage. Before she had time to be sure to whom it belonged, Prince Nikolai stood beside her and had raised her hand to his lips.

‘Your aunt told me I should find you here, Mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘Will you permit me to take you for a drive before you return to the Hotel?’

‘It is very kind of Your Serene Highness,’ Mistral said quietly.

There was a troubled note in her voice. She looked up at the Prince, at the smile on his lips, the excitement in his dark eyes which seemed to be scrutinising her face – feature by feature, then she looked away. The horses drawing the opera carriage were magnificent. Jet black, they were prancing a little with impatience and tossing their long manes.

‘Please come with me, Mademoiselle.’

The Prince’s words were humble, yet his voice was authoritative. Instinctively Mistral knew that he never for one moment anticipated that she would refuse him, and she wished she could do that very thing. She would have liked to walk back alone with Jeanne, to enjoy the sunshine with that sense of well-being and peace which was always hers after she had been to Church. But instead a very different programme awaited her and she was half afraid.

It was not that she did not like the Prince, she did, although his very impetuosity was at times rather frightening. But it was not really the Prince of whom she was scared, but of her aunt’s attitude towards him. He was a part of some plan of Aunt Emilie’s. Mistral was sure of that, and recently she had begun to be suspicious of and terrified by this plan, whatever it might be, which made her aunt give her strange orders and which prevented her from behaving normally and ordinarily as might any other girl of her age.

Why, for instance, had Aunt Emilie said that she was to speak to no other man in Monte Carlo except the Prince?

Why had she said that she must be particularly nice to His Serene Highness? Mistral shrank from the implications in that word ‘nice’. She had indeed questioned her aunt about it.

What do you mean by “nice,” Aunt Emilie?’ she had asked in all seriousness.