She reined in her horse so they could trot side by side and conversation was easier.

“But why, my Lord?” she asked. “What kept you up?”

“Cards,” he answered, “and the fact that, like every fool gambler, I thought my luck would turn.”

“And it didn’t?”

He shook his head and, without answering her, suddenly dug his spurs into his horse and galloped away over the smooth turf, Dipa shrieking with delight and holding on with both hands.

A sudden suspicion shot through Carina, but she dismissed it as absurd. She knew that, however much Lord Lynche hated his child, he would not injure him – not in this way, at any rate.

She spurred on her own horse to catch them up, but it took some doing, for already Lord Lynche was far across the Park and making for the fields beyond and even further.

Finally, Carina caught them up, but only because Lord Lynche had brought his horse to a standstill and was standing on a little hillock looking down on the vale below.

Her cheeks were flushed and her breath was coming quickly as she came up to them.

“I am sorry to appear rude,” he said courteously. “I felt a sudden need to go fast, to try and forget, if it was possible.”

“To forget what you have lost?” Carina asked.

“I suppose so,” he said. “That and many other things. But you know as well as I do that forgetfulness of anything that directly concerns one’s life is impossible, in fact the penalty one pays for one’s crimes is that one always remembers.”

He sounded so unhappy that somehow, although she despised him, Carina’s heart was touched.

“Why don’t you give up gambling?” she asked. “Send your guests away. None of them can bring you any good.”

“Do you suppose I don’t know that?”

The question was sharp so that she looked up in surprise.

“I may be a fool,” he went on roughly, “but I am not a blind fool. Do you imagine that I don’t know them for what they are – Sir Percy Rockley and his friends? They fawn on him for what they can get out of him,”

“Then, why, why?” Carina asked. “You have so many other things.”

“Have I?”

She saw the weary cynical twist of his lips and realised that there were undertones to this conversation that she did not understand.

She was silent, wondering what else she could say.

Suddenly he lifted up his hand and pointed to where, in the vale, there stood a house.

It was very beautiful. Georgian, with white pillars supporting a high portico and long gracious windows looking down on a wonderful sweep of terraces, lawns and gardens.

“What a lovely place!” Carina exclaimed. “Whom does it belong to?”

“It belongs to me,” Lord Lynche said. “It is my home, the house where I would have lived if – ”

He stopped suddenly and Carina understood.