Yet somehow Gretna could not be angry with him on that score. In a way he had been trying to do her a kindness, to rescue her from the attentions of Lord Wroxhall and to protect her from the evils and menaces of a City that she knew so little about.

She took up a piece of writing paper and with the ivory paperknife cut off the address from the top of it.

Then slowly, in her delicate handwriting, she wrote,

“My Lord,

This is to thank your Lordship for your hospitality and to assure you that I have reached my friend in safety. We shall never meet again, but once more I thank you most sincerely for your kindness.

Gretna.”

She read it through several times, assured herself that she could not improve on it and then, slipping it into an envelope, she addressed it to the Marquis in Berkeley Square.

When the maid came in to make up the fire and turn down her bed, Gretna gave her the note.

“Will you have this posted?” she asked.

“It would be quite easy for one of the footmen to take it, miss.”

“No, no,” Gretna protested. “I want it franked and sent through the post. Will you make that clearly understood downstairs?”

“It shall be as you say, miss,” the maid answered.

She went from the room, but not before Gretna had a sudden impulse to take the letter back.

Perhaps it was better to say nothing and yet she had been brought up not only to have good manners but also to be grateful. She could not bring herself to ignore the Marquis altogether even though, as she had said in the letter, they would never meet again.

She felt unaccountably depressed at the thought and told herself that there had been something exhilarating besides frightening about him.

Then she remembered again how he had kissed her and thought that no one, not even Maria, must ever know what had occurred.

She slipped into bed. She had thought that she was tired after the journey, the early rising and the emotions of the night before, but instead of sleeping she lay awake for a very long time.

Some time later still, when the dawn was beginning to lighten the sky above the rooftops, she thought she heard a coach outside.

Through her dreams she thought too she heard a voice – a man’s voice – in the house.

But she was not sure of it and at last she fell into a deep and dreamless slumber which she did not awake from until nearly noon.

*

The next days were spent almost entirely in standing while gowns were fitted on her.

She must turn first this way and then that way to be certain that the hem was the right length, that the bodice fitted and the waist was not too tight.