“No, no, you must not think of him like that,” Carina said. “He is your flesh and blood, he is part of your son, part of the heritage you speak about. You may resent it, but it is true – you have to accept it. You have to make him love the place as you love it.”

“Never!” the Dowager flashed. “Never, never can that yellow face bear the title and sit at the head of the table in the dining room! ‘Lord Lynche’. Can you imagine it? Why, the very yokels on the estate would laugh if they heard it.”

“Then what do you intend to do?” Carina asked.

“I was thinking in the night,” said the Dowager, “whether it would be possible to send him back to where he came from. He must have relations in Java, a grandfather, uncles, cousins, they are all related in one way or another, those Orientals.”

“And who would take him?” Carina asked.

“Why not you?” the Dowager enquired.

“No, no, I could not,” Carina said. “It would be wrong and I promised his mother that I would do my best to look after him.”

“Would it not be better for him?” the Dowager asked. “Can you imagine what his life would be like here? – hated in what he would presumably call his home, out of place at any school we might send him to and finally unhappy and ill at ease in any position that might be thrust upon him?”

“It’s no use,” Carina answered. “I know that it is difficult for you and I can understand and sympathise with what you are feeling. But the child exists, he is your flesh and blood. You cannot just throw him away and send him back to where he was born as if he was an animal with no rights of his own.”

The Dowager gave a sigh.

“A few hundred years ago, a Lynche, confronted as I am with this problem, would have dropped the child into the lake or left him in one of the dungeons to die!”

“I know,” Carina said with a little smile, “but in 1901 we are more civilised. Besides, people don’t disappear, not without there being enquiries.”

She was surprised to see the Dowager’s hands suddenly clench themselves together until the knuckles beneath the gaudy glittering rings turned white.

“Yes,” the old lady muttered. “You are right about that.”

There was silence and then Dipa began softly singing to himself a little tuneless song such as he must have learned in Java, perhaps from his mother or from children he played with.

“A Lynche!” the Dowager said. “A Lynche!”

There was real suffering in her voice and quite unexpectedly Carina felt herself moved.