‘It’s beautiful. I like it very well, but …’

‘But what?’

‘I just don’t feel that this is right, to take your jewellery.’

‘It’s not mine, just as the house is not really mine. All of this was Emmeline’s and she looked to find custodians of it after she was gone.’

‘Nevertheless …’

‘Are you refusing to be one of Emmeline’s custodians?’

‘No, no. I wouldn’t put it like that.’

Jane held out the emerald brooch in the palm of her hand. Even in the soft lamplight of her room, the stones radiated magnificence.

‘Listen, Clorinda – you who are about to become my dear stepmother – would you do me the great favour of taking the brooch if I ask of you something in return?’

‘Something in return?’

‘Something of great weight. A weight that you might not be able to bear.’

Seeing sudden alarm on Clorinda’s face, Jane reached out and pinned the emerald brooch to Clorinda’s dress and said, ‘the brooch is heavy, see how it pulls a little at the fabric of your bodice. Am I asking too much of you, to suffer the same kind of tug?’

‘No,’ said Clorinda. ‘I’m sure you are not …’

‘And can you promise to keep secret – from everybody in the world, including my father, for the time being – what I am about to tell you?’

‘Yes,’ said Clorinda, but the word came out strangely, seeming to cause the normally serene Mrs Morrissey a sudden moment of dyspepsia. Jane waited until this appeared to be past and then said, ‘Well, I have made an important decision …’

‘Yes?’

‘I know that it’s unfair of me to burden you with this. It is, I suppose, that I trust you absolutely.’

‘You are right to trust me, Jane. I promise I will keep anything you tell me safely stowed away inside me.’

‘Well, the death of my aunt has made me see the world in a new way. And I realise that I have made a great mistake in agreeing to marry Valentine Ross.’

‘A mistake? Are you telling me—?’

‘Yes. I know now that such a marriage would make me intolerably unhappy and I have decided that I cannot go through with it.’

Clorinda was silent. Her hand clutched at the brooch pinned to her dress and she stared at Jane in frank amazement.

‘I see,’ she said at last.

‘Of course Valentine will be angry and my father will be upset, but I cannot help it, Clorinda. What I see in such a marriage is a desert of misery.’

‘In that case, of course you are right to call it off. These things are absolutes and if we make the wrong choice …’

‘It is in my mind to go to live in Paris for a while.’

‘Paris?’

‘Yes. They are laying out a new city some people are calling the City of Light. It will be very beautiful. And this is what I ask of my life, that it be new and beautiful.’