Monsieur Bleuet did not give it so much personal attention as he had done in the past. The clientele, which was always of a particularly select class, has deteriorated a little, maybe the fashion has changed. These places rise and fall, you know, and no one knows quite what makes a rendezvous which has proved extremely popular suddenly become démodé.’

‘Ten thousand francs!’ Emilie muttered. ‘How am I to live on it? If that is all I am to have – ’

Mistral was eleven. She saw another seven years of waiting ahead until she could put her plan into operation, the plan which was always in her thoughts by day and of which she dreamed at night. Seven years – seven vital years in which Mistral must have special instruction, special grooming, special lessons so that she could be well versed in the part she had to play!

Money, money, money! She had to have money, it was essential, but where and how could she obtain it?

Emilie’s fingers drummed for a moment on the lawyer’s desk, then suddenly her head went up and her lips tightened.

‘I shall not sell the property,’ she said sharply.

‘Madame! But what will you do with it?’ the lawyer expostulated.

‘I shall run it myself,’ Emilie replied.

She was never to forget the moment where she crossed the threshold of the big stone house standing in a discreet side street conveniently near the fashionable quarter of the city. It impressed Emilie as she had not expected to be impressed. The grey walls picked out in gilt were in good taste, the staircase with its soft carpet, the mirrors which reflected and reflected the well-proportioned salon were restrained and not without charm.

There was nothing wrong with the house itself, it was the personnel who, Emilie knew immediately with are unwavering instinct, were at fault.

The Madame in charge, a silly, overdressed middle aged woman with frizzed hair and are irritating giggle, was far more embarrassed by Emilie than she was by her.

The girls, too, were not as well dressed as they might have been, and their hair was untidy, their make-up badly applied. There was a laxness and a lack of discipline about their behaviour. Emilie knew that she could put her finger on the weak spots.

She applied herself to turning out, cleaning and polishing 5 Rue de Roi as she had applied herself to Léon’s own home five years earlier. Within a month of her taking the reins of management into her own hands the receipts were doubled, in six months they were trebled, and in a year the house was spoken of as the smartest and most expensive place of entertainment in the whole of Paris.

The results gratified Emilie in two ways. First in knowing that her efficiency was conducive to making her into a wealthy woman in her own right, and secondly in lowering still further her opinion of men.