I was ill then for two days. The man who hated gin traps brought a doctor from Chichester and he asked me how I felt, and why I would not eat. He asked me where I had come from and I feigned forgetfulness and told them I could remember nothing except my name and that I was looking for Wide. He left a draught of some foul medicine, which I took the precaution of throwing out of the window whenever it was brought to me, and advised that I should be left to rest.

The man who hated gin traps told me that Sea was safe in the stables and eating well. ‘A fine horse,’ he said, as if that might encourage me to tell of how I got him, how a dirty-faced, stunned gypsy brat came to be riding a first-class hunter.

‘Yes,’ I said, and I turned my face away from his piercing eyes and closed my eyelids as if I would sleep.

I did sleep. I slept and woke to the sunlight on the ceiling of the bedroom and the windows half open and the smell of early roses and the noise of pigeons cooing. I dozed again and when I woke the woman brought me some broth and a glass of port wine and some fruit. I ate the soup but left the rest and slept again. In all of those days I saw nothing but the light on the ceiling of the bed chamber and ate nothing but soup.

Then one morning I woke and did not feel lazy and tired. I stretched, a great cat-like stretch with my toes pointing down to the very foot of the bed and my arms outflung, and then I threw back the fine linen sheets and went over to the window and pushed it open.

It had rained in the night and the sunlight was glinting on the wet leaves and flowers of the rose garden and mist was steaming off the paddock. Immediately below me the paving stones of the terrace were dark yellow where they were damp, paler where they were drying. Beyond the terrace was the gravel of the drive where Sea and I had ridden that first night, beyond that the rose garden with pretty shaped flower-beds and small paths running between them. A delicate little summerhouse of white painted wood stood to my left; as I watched, a swallow swooped in through the open doorway, beak full of mud, nest-building.