Carina could not understand, but it was obvious that Dipa was not only cold but homesick. He wanted the sunshine and his own people and, perhaps more than anything else, his mother.

Carina’s heart melted with compassion. She pulled back the bedclothes and put her arms around the little boy and carried him into the day nursery with the eiderdown wrapped around him.

He cried and then murmured some unintelligible words into her neck and she knew that what she had guessed was right – he was homesick.

“Poor, poor Dipa,” she said aloud, knowing that he would never see his mother again and perhaps his own country was also lost to him.

She stroked his short hair and wondered what Governesses, schools and perhaps a University would make of him. Could he ever be happy in this strange climate, far away from the place to where his heart would always be homing?

He clung to her for some time. Then, with the elasticity of children, he jumped from her lap, teased her to catch him round the table and ran about pretending that he was a horse, while Carina tried to put his clothes on him.

Finally after quite a struggle she managed to dress him and by that time breakfast had been brought upstairs and she then started the inevitable difficulty of getting Dipa to eat what he thought was nasty and unappetising.

It was not easy for Carina to concentrate on Dipa’s troubles when all the time her thoughts kept veering downstairs.

What was Lord Lynche doing at this moment? And what indeed was the news of Sir Percy? If he had died in the night, what was her position now?

There were so many questions that remained unanswered that she was glad when, just as breakfast finished, a footman came to announce,

“Her Ladyship would like to see you, miss.”

“I will come down as soon as His Highness has finished his milk,” Carina answered.

“There were no instructions about the little boy,” the footman said. “Shall I tell Mrs. Barnstaple you would like someone to look after him?”

Carina hesitated for a moment.

“Perhaps that would be best,” she said.

She had learned by now that the servants obeyed the Dowager’s instructions absolutely to the letter. If she sent for one person, it was inconceivable in their minds that two should arrive.

She was the supreme authority. Her word was absolute law and they obeyed as slaves must have obeyed the Roman Emperors or as a Regiment jumps to the command of its Colonel.

‘What can she want?’ Carina asked herself nervously. ‘Could she have found out about last night?’

She decided that that was all too probable as the Dowager knew everything. And she felt herself shake with apprehension as she walked down the broad corridor that led to Lady Lynche’s bedroom.