Recalling other bits and pieces of her conversation with Henry, she now wished she’d not rushed away so hastily. Now that she was here, sitting alone as she often did on such occasions, she missed his cordial company and the way they’d so quickly gained a comfortable rapport. She wondered then if she would ever see him again, and the thought saddened her. People came from all over for this sort of social gathering. She had no idea where he lived; for that matter she knew absolutely nothing about him—except that he’d spent nine years in India. And that Howard Roderick was his closest, lifelong friend. Henry couldn’t live too far away from here, she concluded. Although the Roderick home was nearly an hour’s drive by carriage from her own home.

Amala stopped herself from such silly speculations when the music ended and everyone applauded. A moment later her mother was seated next to her, patting her arm in her typical way.

“Oh, there you are, darling,” Viola Hepworth said. “I was trying to find you earlier. Is everything all right?”

“Yes, fine,” Amala said. “I only took a brief stroll in the garden to get away from the heat.”

“How very brilliant of you!” Viola said and exchanged a wink with her husband, Oliver, who was chatting nearby with a couple of other men near his age.

Amala’s unofficial parents were the most generous and loving people she had ever encountered, and she considered herself greatly blessed to have been taken into their home and their lives. Oliver was tall and thin with barely a hint of gray hair left on his balding head, but his lack of hair didn’t detract from his fine features that had—according to Viola—only grown more handsome with age. Viola was also tall—at least compared to most women. But still she was more than a few inches shorter than her husband. Her hair had also gone gray, but it was long and thick and always looked striking no matter how it was styled. Right now a portion of it was pinned up artistically at the back of her head while the rest hung down her back in an array of curls. Viola had the hair of a woman half her age, which made her age show less in her face than did the ages in the faces of most women of her generation. Ironically her hair was styled very much the same as Amala's and Kat's—which was likely due to the fact that the same maid had done all of their hair earlier this evening. Since the style was certainly flattering on all of them, it worked well.