“Suppose we start at the beginning,” she now heard him say. “What is your name?”

“Alyna,” she replied, “and my mother is Lady Maude Camberley.”

“I have met her,” Lord Dorrington remarked briefly.

He remembered a sharp-voiced over-painted female, who had challenged him across a gaming table and come off the worse in the encounter.

He looked at the girl sitting next to him and wondered what she had in common with a mother who was a notorious gambler.

The heart-shaped face under the fair hair in the light of the lantern was curiously appealing.

She was obviously very young and her lips, still trembling a little, were soft and sensitive.

She must have nerved herself to the point of desperation to attempt the act that he had prevented her from executing. And it had left her very pale.

On her cheeks he could see two small patches of rouge standing out vividly against the whiteness of her skin.

She was not looking at him, but staring out over the river and he saw the despair in her eyes.

She was twisting her cold fingers together in the lap of her frilly white gown. It was obviously an expensive garment and yet somehow it seemed tasteless and unbecoming.

She looked so defenceless that Lord Dorrington’s voice, usually slightly mocking and cynical, was unusually gentle as he asked,

“Suppose you tell me what is troubling you?”

“What is the point?” Alyna asked. “You cannot help me – nobody can!”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“Because if I go back to the ballroom they are going to announce – my engagement.”

“And you don’t wish to marry this gentleman to whom you are to be betrothed?”

“I would rather die! Why did you stop me? I had made up my mind – to jump.”

“And yet you hesitated,” Lord Dorrington said quietly.

“It looked so – dark and – cold,” Alyna whispered with a little tremor in her voice. “But they say drowning is not an – unpleasant death and very – quick if you cannot swim.”

“It’s not a method I would advocate for someone of your age,” Lord Dorrington said.

“What does it matter what age I am – if I have to marry – him?” Alyna asked.

“Who is the gentleman in question?” Lord Dorrington enquired.

“Prince Ahmadi – of Kahriz.”

There was a note of repulsion in her voice as if she spoke about a reptile.

“Prince Ahmadi!” Lord Dorrington repeated. “I have heard of him.”

“He goes everywhere in London,” Alyna said. “People think he is – charming and he is – rich – very rich.”

Somewhere at the back of his mind Lord Dorrington remembered hearing that Lady Maude Camberley was always borrowing money.

“Is money so important to you?” he asked.

“It is to Mama,” Alyna answered. “She wishes me to marry someone wealthy. She told me so before I went back to the Seminary.”

“The Seminary!” Lord Dorrington ejaculated. “How old are you?”