“I don’t know yet, my Lord,” Gretna answered. “Maybe I could be a companion to an elderly lady – perhaps I could teach children.”

Her face darkened as she spoke and she thought how frightening it would be to go to an unknown house, to be at a stranger’s beck and call or to strive to please an employer who might be too exacting and demanding more than she was capable of giving.

The Marquis, watching her, thought that it was unlikely that any sensible woman would employ anyone so pretty as a Governess. As for being a companion, what a Fate for a ‘Nymph of Spring’ to be tied to the side of old and disgruntled ‘Winter’.

“I think you are over-young for such positions,” he commented at length.

“Oh, no,” Gretna contradicted him at once. “I shall be eighteen next October. I know other girls start far earlier than that to earn a living.”

The Marquis, his eyes on her, seemed to be cogitating something in his mind, but after a short silence, he rose to his feet and suggested that they repair to the salon.

Gretna rose to her feet in confusion,

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “Ought I to have withdrawn and left you to your port, my Lord? Mama has told me that it is what the ladies should do at a dinner party. I am afraid I forgot. We have never had any port in our house for so long. Papa liked it, but the doctor forbade it after he became so ill.”

The Marquis looked a little puzzled, wondering what sort of farmer it was who liked a glass of port with his dinner. But he said nothing, only followed Gretna’s outspread muslin skirts towards the salon.

A footman, however, showed her not into the large room where she had sat on arrival, but into a smaller room opening out of it. A cosy comfortable little anteroom with curtains of exquisite tapestry and walls partially covered with shelves on which was arranged a fine collection of Chelsea china and Battersea enamel.

Gretna gave an exclamation at their beauty and then another cry of delight because, lying on the hearth in front of the fire, were two black and white spaniels. They allowed her to caress them, pushing their cold noses against her little hands and looking with melting eyes first at her and then at their Master.

“Don’t encourage them,” the Marquis told her. “They are incorrigibly sentimental and always greedy for affection.”

“Are we not all like that?” Gretna asked, smiling up at him.

She had no idea of the picture she made, half-kneeling on the hearthrug, the spaniels close against her and her golden head silhouetted against a chair upholstered in ruby velvet.

The Marquis stood looking at her for a moment and then settled himself in a wing-backed chair on the other side of the hearthrug.

“I wonder what will become of you?” he mused aloud.