“If you leave The Castle, what will happen to Dipa and me?”

“You will come with me wherever I go,” he answered. “Do you think that I can be without you, without seeing you and without knowing that you are there?”

She felt the flames rise within her at his words and at the passion in his voice.

“Could we bear it?” she asked. “Knowing that we cannot express our love – for reasons that you will not tell me?”

“I am not certain that I could bear it,” he answered, “day after day, year after year, seeing you and yet being unable to touch you.”

“I love you,” she whispered. “Isn’t that more important than your secret?”

She saw the glow in his eyes and the sudden tightening of his lips.

“Don’t tempt me too far,” he replied in a voice hoarse with emotion. “I want you more than I could believe it possible ever to want a woman. I love you as if you were an angel in Heaven itself, but also as a man loves his wife who means more to him than anything else on earth. I want to kiss you, I want to hold you close to me, I want to make you mine. Oh, Carina, try to understand, but don’t drive me too far.”

She felt herself trembling at his words and as if the passion in his voice swept over her in a full tide.

And then she rose to her feet.

“I must – go,” she said a little unsteadily.

He rose as well and she saw that he was very white but his eyes were dark and, when he looked at her, she felt as if he kissed her lips.

He moved towards the door and had just reached it when Colonel Wakeford came into the room holding something in his hand.

“Look what I have here,” he exclaimed.

He flung it down on one of the baize tables and Carina saw that it was a box packed full of playing cards.

“What the devil is it?” one of the players who had been interrupted from his game demanded.

“I got it in Percy’s room when I was helping the doctor get him ready to go to hospital,” Colonel Wakeford answered.

“I saw his valet trying to kick it out of sight. It made me curious and I insisted on seeing what it was. It is full of cards, fifty or sixty packs all wrapped up with the seals unbroken. You see them?”

“Well, what of it?” someone asked. “Percy told me once that he usually makes his host a present of a number of new packs. He said that if there was one thing he disliked it was dirty cards and people in the country seldom have enough new ones in their house.”

“He brought you some cards when he arrived here, didn’t he?” Colonel Wakeford asked Lord Lynche.