She remembered so well what she had felt when they had to leave Claverly. She recalled going round in the morning to say goodbye to all the people on the estate whom she had known since she was a child. Each one was a true and valued friend of the family. They had wept bitterly and she had wept too, forgetting that she was nearly seventeen.

Her father had not been there. He had said later that he could not face it, that it was best never to see the house again rather than intensify the agony of saying goodbye.

Carina had not really understood what had happened until she and her mother had re-joined him in London and then he had been so upset when he spoke of it that her mother had forbidden the subject to be raised.

“It is done, my darling,” she had said to Carina. “It’s cruel that we have to leave something we hold so dear, but it is done, and we can do nothing about it. We must have courage, we have to be brave. Remember always in life that courage counts more than anything else. It is only that which gives you strength to face the future.”

Carina had tried to remember her words a year later when her mother died and she was left alone with her father.

She thought now how much Claverly had meant to her and she found herself understanding the dark misery that she had seen in Lord Lynche’s eyes and the torture she had heard in his voice.

‘Why could I not have helped him more?’ she asked herself.

As they had sat in the kitchen in the house he loved, she remembered that it had seemed for a moment that the burden and devastation had slipped from him.

He had praised her cooking and laughed with Dipa when one of the kittens fell into the saucer of milk they had put for the mother cat.

He had seemed young then. But unhappiness had enveloped him again almost like a mask and he had slipped away into a reserve and coldness that made him seem unapproachable.

What was happening downstairs?

Carina felt that she could hardly bear to be left out of it all. She walked towards the bell, wondering if she could ring it and ask for Mrs. Barnstaple and guess by the older woman’s voice if she knew anything.

Then Carina told herself that she was behaving in an undignified manner. It was not for her to pry into her employer’s affairs. When she was told to pack her trunk would be soon enough for her to know what was happening.

Dipa woke when the afternoon was well advanced and, because the sunshine of the morning had turned to rain, Carina decided not to take him out again.