“But that is the one thing you cannot say!” Alyna answered. “Don’t forget that I am here in secret. No one outside these four walls must know of my very existence.”

“It gets more and more thrilling,” Elizabeth Wardell exclaimed. “Oh, Alyna, I don’t have any idea of what your other name is. I have been feeling so depressed and miserable without Hugo and now you have come to change everything! I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you.”

“You ought not to be saying that,” Alyna remarked. “That must be my line!”

Elizabeth Wardell gave a little shout of laughter.

“We will write it as a play,” she said, “and next time Ulric comes we will read it to him. Do we make him the hero or the villain?”

‘The hero, of course!” Alyna replied. “But unfortunately we don’t have a heroine.”

“No, and of course it will be difficult to find one!” Elizabeth Wardell agreed, but her eyes were twinkling as she spoke.

Chapter Five

Lord Dorrington drew up his horses with a flourish outside the front door of Shenley Manor and stepped down from his high-perch phaeton.

The front door was open and he did not trouble to knock, but walked in and crossing the hall entered the salon.

He found his sister asleep on the sofa. He stood looking down at her and, although he made no sound, she must have realised instinctively that someone was there because she stirred and opened her eyes.

“Hello – Ulric,” she greeted him sleepily.

“I am sorry to have disturbed you,” he said. “Where is Alyna?”

“She is in the garden with the children,” Elizabeth replied. “She has been washing her hair for about the sixth time.”

Lord Dorrington smiled and turned towards the French window.

“How did you know?” Elizabeth asked.

Apparently he did not hear her, because he did not reply but stepped out into the garden.

The sunshine was golden on the spring flowers and there was the fragrance of lilac and syringa blossom.

But the green lawns sloping down to the small stream were empty and then, as Lord Dorrington moved slowly across them, he thought he heard voices in the orchard that bordered the garden.

He was not mistaken. A few seconds later he saw Alyna with Rupert and Ivan under the apple trees.

It was a picture of enchantment that made him stand still. The apple trees were in blossom and were silhouetted white as mountain snow against a blue sky.

The ground beneath them was also white with fallen petals save where the late daffodils were still blooming like golden trumpets.

On the trunk of a fallen tree Alyna was sitting with Ivan on her knee. She was wearing a pale green cotton gown, which Lord Dorrington recognised as belonging to his sister.