It stood on the chest of drawers just inside the door and now it was flickering low, giving only just enough light to enable her to see the outlines of the furniture nearest to it.

Suddenly, as she looked across the room, Carina realised that the handle of the door was moving.

As she watched, it turned very slowly, very silently, to the right.

She felt her heart leap with fear and she guessed what it was that had wakened her. It must have been the click of the latch being drawn back inside the lock.

She lay still, breathless and unable to move.

Again the handle turned and this time some pressure was put on the door from the other side. But there was no question of the lock giving way, it had been made by a locksmith who knew his job.

And someone must have relinquished the handle, because the latch went back with a click.

For a moment there was silence.

Then Carina thought that she could hear someone breathing heavily on the other side of the door.

There was a knock, a faint insistent knock, the sound that was made by someone who wished to gain admittance, but who did not wish anyone else to know what was happening.

For a moment Carina felt terrified and then, quite suddenly, she was no longer afraid. She was safe, safe behind the lock, which would need a Herculean strength to break it.

She turned her face round to the pillow and pulled the bedclothes high over her head.

‘Let him knock! Let him wait there until daylight!’

It would, she felt, teach him a lesson!

It was inconceivable that Sir Percy could imagine for one moment that she would let him in. But she knew that despite the fact that everything about him was repulsive there was no doubt that many women would have been attracted by all he could offer.

A house in St. John’s Wood, a carriage, a few years, at any rate, of luxurious living, of being waited on, of having fashionable and expensive clothes, of being able to go to theatres and restaurants where such women were permitted as long as they were escorted by their ‘protectors’.

Carina wanted to laugh aloud at the word. To be ‘protected’ by Sir Percy – could anything be more a contradiction of fact?

‘I hate him,’ Carina thought. ‘I hate him. But I don’t believe that I need be afraid of him anymore.’

She sounded brave, even to herself. And, because her body had less courage than her mind, she found herself sitting bolt upright in bed and listening.

The knocking had ceased.

There was no longer, she thought, anyone outside the door, and the oil lamp had finally gone out. Now she was alone in the darkness.

It was then she felt terror sweep over her, terror not particularly of Sir Percy, but of all men, every man.