Earlier in the day, in a big house at Marazion, a visitor had been shown into the sick room of Jenifer Drannock. Jenifer showed no surprise or emotion. She invited her visitor to sit at her bedside in its position beside a large window which looked out over St Michael’s Mount and the busy shipping on the sea around it.

‘I knew you would come to see me, by and by. You have been home first I take it,’ she gasped, her voice now weakened out of recognition.

‘I have not.’

Jenifer raised her faint eyebrows. ‘Then you can tell me, Sir Oliver Pengarron, why you have chosen to come to see me before your family.’

Oliver studied the changes in Jenifer’s appearance as keenly as she did his. While she had shrivelled in size and grown as pale as the white nightgown she wore, he was deeply tanned and dressed in the clothes of a working man.

He said, ‘I need to straighten out a few things with you before I see Kerensa, to be able to face her with a clean breast. How is she, Jenifer, and my family?’

‘Why ask me? I never leave this bed.’

‘Because I am certain you have kept yourself informed of their welfare.’ He waited patiently for her to answer.

She did not spare him. ‘They’re missing you terribly.’

Oliver sighed and looked away. ‘I’ve missed them more than I could ever have imagined…’

His thoughts drifted away and Jenifer knew he was oblivious to her blatant scrutiny of him. He had changed much in the months of his absence. The devilish arrogant gleam at the back of his black eyes was gone. The straight back, the firm set of his broad shoulders, the fine handsome lines of his face were still there. But the restlessness was missing, the constant urgency to be on the move, always seeking to be doing something, to have his own way. Yet there was pain in his face; the changes had cost him dearly, Jenifer was sure of that.

‘You’re wondering where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing all this time I’ve spent away,’ he said, his eyes darting back to her. His voice was also different, a tone softer, more mellow, the words delivered just that little bit slower.