Dipa was instantly delighted with the suggestion.

“Find more birds, more doggies, more horses,” he suggested.

He turned round as he spoke and for the first time saw Lord Lynche.

“Horse, horse!” he cried and ran across the lawn, his arms outstretched.

Carina had expected that Lord Lynche would have left after she had walked away from him. But he was still sitting there astride his horse and now, as the child ran towards them, she saw that the horse was startled.

It reared and Carina was frightened that the horse’s hoofs might come crashing down on the child’s head.

“Dipa! Dipa!” she called, and ran after him more swiftly than she had run for a very long time to catch him just as he reached Lord Lynche’s side, holding up his arms quite unafraid of the prancing horse and still shouting at the top of his lungs, “Horse, horse!”

She picked Dipa up just as Lord Lynche swung the rearing animal to one side.

“You must be careful! Don’t shout, Dipa, you are frightening the horse,” Carina begged, a little breathlessly.

Lord Lynche wheeled the horse away from them and drew it to a standstill.

Carina looked up at him. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was vividly gold as it curled around her white forehead.

“I am sorry, my Lord,” she said. “I do not think that Dipa is used to animals.”

“You must take more care of him. Teach him not to run into danger,” Lord Lynche said reprovingly.

With that he touched the brim of his hat perfunctorily and, spurring his horse, moved away over the lawns and into the Park.

Carina watched him go and saw as he moved from a trot into a gallop that he was a man who seemed almost a part of the horse he rode. Reluctantly she had to acknowledge that he had an excellent seat.

“Horse, Dipa ride on horse,” the child in her arms was pleading.

“Another day, not now,” Carina replied, as she set him down on the ground again.

She was aware that her encounter with her employer had left her curiously depressed and at the same time agitated.

‘We were happy until he came,’ she thought resentfully.

But now it was almost as if he had caused the sun to go in and The Castle to have the same dark overpowering majesty from which she had shrunk the night before.

Taking Dipa by the hand, she marched him quickly away from the lawns and round the side of The Castle where she saw the formal gardens.

Here there were rose gardens, herb gardens and water gardens all opening in and out of each other in the Elizabethan manner. Small and compact, they were breathtakingly colourful with the dahlias in full bloom and the Michaelmas daisies great banks of purple and mauve against the darkness of yew hedges and red brick walls.