“I am sorry – desperately sorry,” she said. “I would help you if I could, but there is nothing to be done except to bring him up as an English gentleman and hope that he will grow more like – ” She was going to say ‘his father’, but substituted, “ – his ancestors”.

The Dowager’s eyes rested on Dipa and then, almost as if the sight was unbearable, she looked away and towards Carina.

“I like you, girl. You are honest and not afraid to say what you are thinking, not that I don’t doubt that you are speaking out of your place in doing so, but I like your courage. Take the little brat away upstairs and educate him. See if you can make him understand the way a Christian should behave and God help you if you think you can turn him into a gentleman.”

“I can only try,” Carina said.

“Why, why did he marry her?” the Dowager muttered as if she was talking to herself.

Carina walked across the room.

“Come along, Dipa,” she said firmly. “It’s time to go upstairs.”

She tried to take the gold hairbrush away from him, but he clung to it.

“Mine, mine!” he shouted.

Carina shook her head.

“No, it belongs to your grandmother. You must leave it here for her. You have your toys upstairs.”

“Dipa want! Dipa want!” Dipa persisted, holding onto the brush.

Carina took it from him firmly and he hit out at her with his small arms, uttering what sounded like a string of Javanese swear words.

“A perfect English gentleman,” a cynical voice said from the bed.

“He is naughty sometimes,” Carina said apologetically, “but he is always sorry afterwards.”

As if he understood what she was saying, Dipa buried his face in her neck as she picked him up in her arms.

Carina did not look back at the Dowager, but she knew that the old lady’s eyes followed them until they went out through the door.

Matthews was waiting outside.

“Is she all right?” she asked.

Carina nodded, she could not trust her voice to answer, and then, feeling almost as if she had been buffeted about in a rough sea, she climbed slowly upstairs to the nursery with Dipa in her arms.

“That was naughty of you,” she said as they reached the top floor, “very naughty, do you understand?”

She hoped she was making some impression, but, as they turned towards the door into the day nursery, Dipa suddenly remembered the rocking horse.

“Horse, horse!” he cried, struggling out of Carina’s arms and ran excitedly through the door ahead of her.

She gave a little sigh of helplessness and then, as she entered the nursery, she stopped suddenly and the worries about Dipa flew out of her head.

Standing in front of the fireplace, his hands in his pockets waiting for her approach, was Sir Percy Rockley.

He saw her consternation and she knew that it pleased him.