“I am going to send you pounds and pounds – every month,” Carina said lightly. “You wait and see. Now that I am the breadwinner of the family, you and I will be able to start saving for a house of our own.”

“But where are you goin’?” Nanny asked. “You haven’t told me that yet.”

“There’s no time to talk about anything,” Carina said hastily. “Is David downstairs? He must bring down my boxes. You have packed them, haven’t you?”

“They are all packed,” Nanny answered, “and your beloved mother’s things, too, every one of them. After all they might come in useful.”

“I wouldn’t leave them behind,” Carina said fiercely, “not for Cousin Emma to paw over. You know how she always said Mama was extravagant and sniffed at her pretty clothes. It was only because she was jealous.”

“That she was!” Nanny cried. “And jealous of you too ever since you were a baby.”

“Now, where’s David?” Carina asked. “I’ll go and call him.”

She ran from the room and her voice, sweet and musical even when it was raised, sounded over the empty house,

“David! David!”

“I be a-comin”, miss.”

An old man, wearing a stained apron, came hurring up from the basement.

“Can you bring down the boxes, David? There is a cabby outside. Perhaps he will give you a hand”

“’E’ll ’ave to,” David replied laconically. “I can’t manage them big ones meself.”

He moved towards the front door and Carina ran upstairs.

On the first floor the doors of the reception room were open, showing bare floors and curtainless windows.

She climbed up the uncarpeted stairs again and there in a big front room were her boxes packed and waiting with the exception of one, which still stood open, the tissue paper rustling a little from the breeze from the window.

This room was partly furnished. A magnificent gilt Louis XIVth bed stood in an alcove flanked on either side with satinwood side tables, which matched the ornate dressing table with a triple mirror and ormolu candlesticks.

Carina stood for a moment looking about her.

“It’s a good thing you’re goin’ today, dear,” Nanny remarked, having come more slowly up the stairs behind her. “That man came again after you left and said he was collectin’ the bed and the last of the furniture tomorrow mornin’ at the very latest. I told him as how you were expectin’ relations and he said he was not interested in relations – only money.”

“Let him take them away!” Carina said defiantly, but a little sob broke her voice.

“I will put the rest of your things in the trunk,” Nanny said, taking a dress from the wardrobe and a few simple toilet articles from the dressing table.

“You haven’t told me yet where you’re goin’,” she said as she knelt on the floor.

“Moreton-in-the-Marsh,” Carina replied.