“Get up,” Dipa repeated and before she could prevent it he was out of bed and jumping about the room in his nightshirt.

She laughed, chased him and having finally caught him made him do as he was told while she brought the tea to his bedside and suggested that they had a picnic.

This was a new word and new game and, after he understood what it was all about, Dipa willingly acquiesced, enjoying honey sandwiches and sponge cake, although the way he ate did not improve the appearance of the sheets.

“Now ride horse,” Dipa suggested when tea was finished.

Carina shook her head and instead fetched him a box of toy soldiers that she had seen earlier in the day in the nursery cupboard.

The soldiers were rather battered as if they had been played with many times and she had a sudden vision of Lord Lynche as a small boy marching them up and down the nursery floor or perhaps playing at battles with his brother.

It was hard to imagine Lord Lynche being naughty like Dipa and she wondered if, when there had been children in it, The Castle had been less awe-inspiring and perhaps a happier place. There was something gloomy about the long silent passages and the empty nursery wing.

She thought how cut off they were up here from the busy household below and was thankful, although at the same time it gave her a strange feeling of isolation.

Supposing Sir Percy came upstairs – even if she screamed it was unlikely that anyone would hear her.

Then she realised that Dipa was talking to her and she had not heard him.

“Look, look,” he insisted and she forced herself to go on playing with him and not to think of her own problems.

Mrs. Barnstaple came up to the nursery just as Carina had finished giving Dipa his bath and put him into bed.

“Have you got everything you want, Miss Warner?” she enquired.

“Everything, thank you,” Carina answered.

“I won’t stay long, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Barnstaple said, “there’s a big party downstairs tonight. A dozen people are coming to dine. I have to get a bedroom ready for the ladies so that they can titivate when they arrive and Ellen, the second housemaid whose job it is, always forgets something.”

“What are they going to do after dinner?” Carina asked. “Will they dance?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Barnstaple answered. “It’s always cards these days. I was just saying to Mr. Newman that ever since his Lordship became friends with that Sir Percy it’s been cards, cards, cards all the time. Before that I don’t think there was even so much as a game of whist in the house. But now they sit up playing cards all night and start again the next day, almost as if there was nothing else to interest them.”