It was almost as if some secret understanding passed between them. He nodded his head and, as if she could not bear what she had been told, the Dowager closed her eyes.

“What can we do?” she said after a moment, in a very different tone. “This house – our name. I have believed in it all my life. I have worked for it – no, I have lived for it – and now this – ”

“There is nothing we can do, Mama,” Lord Lynche said. “As you know, I shall not be sorry.”

The Dowager seemed to recover her energy.

“Quiet!” she roared at him. “Don’t you dare say such things! Do you think I am defeated? I am not!”

She turned to Carina.

“Bring that little horror here! Let me have a look at him.”

Biting back the words that rose to her lips, Carina distracted Dipa’s attention from the dog and lifting him in her arms carried him to the side of the bed.

He was instantly enraptured by the Dowager’s jewels.

“Pretty! Pretty!” he gurgled, leaning forward trying to grasp at her bracelets.

She looked him over rather, Carina thought, as though he was an animal in the stockyard.

“Yellow!” she exclaimed. “And if there is a drop of English blood in him it does not show. Who is his mother?”

“Her name is Chi-Yun,” Lord Lynche said.

“That tells me nothing!” the Dowager snapped. “What is she like, then?”

Carina, realising that she was being addressed again, answered carefully,

“Lady Lynche? She was very ill when I saw her, but she had obviously once been very beautiful. I was told that she had been a dancer.”

“A dancer!” the Dowager snorted. “A prostitute more likely.”

“Really, Mama,” Lord Lynche expostulated, “you will shock our guest.”

“Then she must be shocked,” the Dowager retorted. “Come on, what else do you know?”

“I understand from the landlady who was looking after her,” Carina said, “that her mother was Javanese and her father was a Dutchman.”

“An explanation of illegitimacy that she doubtless got out of The Ladies’ Journal or a yellow-backed novelette from the quaysides of Marseilles!” the Dowager ejaculated. “What else?”

Nothing, I am afraid,” Carina said. “I was only engaged this morning to bring the child here. I have done what I was paid to do. If you wish me to leave him and go, I am quite prepared to do so.”

Then, as she spoke, she felt that she was betraying her promise to the dying woman that she would look after the boy.

Yet she felt, at the same time, that Dipa would be best served if she showed spirit rather than humility and subservience, which, she was certain, these overpowering and odious people expected of her.

“Go? Why should you go and spread tales of what you have seen here all over the countryside?” the Dowager snapped.

“Mama! Mama! You are going too far!” Lord Lynche protested.