Lady Lynche was looking much as she had the night before except that now she was wearing diamonds around her neck instead of her enormous pearls. Carina had never seen so many large diamonds before. She could not help staring at them as they glittered with every movement the Dowager made.

Carina could see now that the hangings of the bed were tattered and in some places torn with old age, the ermine cover was turning yellow and everything in the room in the cruelty of daylight looked as if it had stood there for centuries.

“Good morning, Miss Warner,” the Dowager said, inclining her head with what Carina recognised as a beautifully coiffured wig.

“Good morning,” Carina replied and made Dipa come forward and hold out his small hand.

“He is even yellower than I thought last night,” Lady Lynche said sharply, looking down at the tiny hand that her grandson was holding out to her.

“He cannot help it,” Carina replied before she thought that her answer might be construed into being impertinent.

“I am well aware of that,” the Dowager answered, “and I am well aware too that you think I am hard and unfeeling and lacking in all the natural human emotions not to be clasping my grandson to my breast with the proper expressions of filial joy.”

Carina blushed.

“I did not say so,” she murmured.

“No, but you looked it,” Lady Lynche said. “And your looks are far too bold and far too frank for the role you are playing, not very efficiently, I might say.”

“I don’t understand,” Carina said.

“I think you do,” the Dowager insisted. This is your first situation, isn’t it?”

Carina opened her lips to say that she had a reference upstairs and then she changed her mind.

“Yes, it is,” she admitted.

“I thought so,” Lady Lynche answered. “Now tell me why you have taken it.”

“Because I need the money,” Carina answered, “and because it was the only one I was offered.”

“Well, that is frank at any rate,” Lady Lynche said, “and now you think that you have fallen on clover? You know that we have something to hide and so you are going to make the very best of it. You were talking to my son this morning. What did you say to him?”

Carina looked startled. She had not realised that Lady Lynche’s windows overlooked the front of the house and then, as she glanced towards the window, she saw that they did not.

Someone had seen her and someone had already reported to this amazing old woman what had occurred.

“Lord Lynche asked me if I was comfortable,” she replied.

“Anything else?”

Carina, almost hypnotised by the Dowager’s shrewd eyes, told the truth.

“I suggested that he should go and see Dipa’s mother,” she said. “If she is alive, she might want to see him – if she is dead, there is no one to arrange for her funeral.”