And so Mistral was given the freedom of Father Vincent’s library. She read a strange and varied assortment of books. There were books on religion, travel, philosophy, and books which, while being romances, were also some of the greatest achievements in French literature. As she grew more proficient at languages, Father Vincent gave her German books to read, and later Italian.

But perhaps among all the volumes gathered together in Father Vincent’s library and reaching from floor to ceiling she liked the English ones best. Samuel Johnson and Thackeray she found entrancing, Shakespeare was an acquired taste which grew on her after she had read and re-read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The more modern authors like Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen and Dickens were read over and over again, while the poets held her spellbound. The Mother Superior would have fainted if she had known that Mistral had read Lord Byron’s books and found them fascinating.

There were dozens of others which at first she liked because they were English, but which later became, as books should, real friends and often closer than the real people in her life.

But even books could not compensate Mistral for her lack of parents and a home life, and when she learnt that she was to leave the Convent and go to Aunt Emilie, it had been a moment of sheer exaltation. At last she would be like other girls, at last she would be able to love someone and be loved in return.

She knew now that nothing had happened in the way she had anticipated. The first night in Paris, when she had arrived at her Aunt’s house unannounced, she had gone to sleep confidently assured that this was to be her future home. But in the morning she had learned differently, and now it seemed she had only exchanged the confines of the Convent walls and the gentle affection of the Nuns for the impersonality of a hotel bedroom and the uncertain temper of Aunt Emilie.

Aunt Emilie did not love her, Mistral was sure of that. She was not even certain if she loved her.

At times it seemed as if there was a dark hostility in Emilie’s eyes, a hostility which seemed to take a delight in finding fault, in discovering some trivial misdemeanour for which she could utter a most stringent rebuke.

Mistral crossed her bedroom and opened a drawer in the dressing table. In the blue leather box lived with velvet lay the pearls which had belonged to her mother. She took them out and held them in her hands. She stroked them a little and felt that they were warm beneath her touch.

They had been her Mother’s!