“When she died,” he said, “Boccaccio cried, ‘her soul has passed into a new star’. Every man who saw her loved her.”

“And I expect she loved them,” Alyna observed. “So you see there is really no resemblance between us! If I have a heart it is frozen and no man will ever melt it.”

Lord Dorrington smiled.

“You are laughing at me!” she cried accusingly.

“I am amused at the absurdity of your going through life without being loved or loving,” he answered. “You see, Alyna, women with hair like yours are very sensitive and at the same time very susceptible to the fires engendered by Venus.”

”If you are trying to suggest that I could be passionate,” Alyna said coldly, “you are quite wrong!”

“I hope eventually I shall prove,” Lord Dorrington replied, “that the colour of your hair could not convey a falsehood to those who admire it.”

He spoke dryly and she was uncertain as to whether he was paying her a compliment or not. Anyway she thought that his ideas were utterly ridiculous.

Later in the afternoon they walked in the garden and Lord Dorrington showed Alyna the Herb Garden that his mother had cultivated and which was laid out exactly as it had been when the house was first built.

There were high walls of red brick, yew hedges and a fascinating maze through which one could wander until eventually one found a sundial supported by a cupid in the very centre of it.

“It’s all so lovely!” Alyna said as the afternoon came to an end. “I never imagined a house could be so perfect in every way. It is warm and home-like and yet it has a mystery about it as well.”

Lord Dorrington showed her the Priest holes, the hidden staircases that lay behind the panelling, the great fireplaces in which there was a secret corner where a spy could listen unheard.

“You are so lucky, so very lucky, to own such a marvellous house,” she exclaimed.

“Now you own it too,” he said quietly.

She looked at him with a startled expression on her face.

“It now belongs to you,” he said. “Did you not hear me say in the Service last night, ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow’?”

She looked at him uncertainly as if she was afraid that he was teasing her.

“If I could have only a tiny part of Dorrington Park,” she said, “I feel I would be happy for ever.”

“You own half,” he replied. “We share it.”

Again she glanced at him with a question in her eyes, but he was staring out of the window onto the garden watching the rooks as they flew back to their nests in the high trees.

They had dinner again in the Banqueting Hall and there was so much to talk about.