Humphrey had been attending the consulting rooms of Dr Thomas McWhirter in Harley Street. He was a handsome middle-aged man with thick white hair and a square, tanned face. He had very piercing blue eyes which Humphrey felt could look into her very soul. She had poured out all her resentment against Daisy and the ‘strain’ of keeping an eye on Rose. She was encouraged to talk about Rose.

At her last consultation, Dr McWhirter had said in that deep, attractive voice of his, ‘I think Lady Rose may be insane, cleverly insane. I think she needs treatment.’

‘Do you mean Lady Rose should consult you?’

‘No, she would be too cunning. I have an asylum, more a refuge, for members of society. It is more like a country house. Lady Polly should be persuaded that it would help her daughter immensely to be confined for, say, a few months. After that, I promise you, she would be a model of society.’

‘If I suggest such a thing to her ladyship, I think she would fire me,’ said Humphrey.

‘But you say your charge gets into serious trouble. Wait for the next episode and seize the chance.’

Rose was not aware she was being courted. A baronet, Sir Richard Devizes, was frequently at her side. As Sir Richard was nearly fifty, the nearly twenty-year-old Rose never for one moment considered his attention to be other than fatherly. And so she allowed him to escort her to his box at the opera and sat with him at soirées and parties.

Daisy tried to caution her but Rose only laughed and said he kept the other men away and he was too old to be romantically interested in her.

It came as a shock to her on the fourth week since Angela Stockton’s lecture when her mother and Humphrey burst into her room where she was reading and told her she must put on her best gown because Sir Richard had something important to say to her.

Lady Polly was elated. Sir Richard had asked to pay his addresses to Rose. He was handsome and fabulously wealthy. Certainly he was a bit old, but the guidance of an older man was just what Rose needed. It would also mean that she and the earl could stop worrying about their wayward daughter.

‘Why does he want to see me?’ asked Rose as Lady Polly and Humphrey fussed over her.

‘It’s a surprise,’ said Lady Polly.

With a sinking feeling in her heart, Rose went downstairs, her silk petticoats rustling beneath a gown of blue taffeta. She missed Daisy, but Daisy had gone to Hatchards to buy her some more books.

Lady Polly pushed her daughter into the drawing-room and left her to face Sir Richard alone.

‘Sir Richard,’ said Rose nervously, ‘why have you called?’

He pulled out a large handkerchief and placed it on the floor and then knelt on it. ‘Come here,’ he said.