Carina sat down on a chair by the fireplace. She felt a sense of helplessness, not knowing what to say or how to comfort him. There was, indeed, nothing she could say. How inadequate words were on an occasion like this!

Lord Lynche swung round.

“Can you tell me what I should say to my mother?” he asked and obviously expected no answer as he continued, “because The Castle and the estate have been her whole life. She has lived for it, worked for it, schemed for it – ‘the heritage of the Lynches’. How sick I have been at times of hearing the very word and yet now I am beginning to understand that it is part of our blood.”

“Have you nothing left?” Carina asked. “Could you not manage somehow to keep The Castle itself?”

“I don’t know,” Lord Lynche said helplessly. “I honestly don’t know. I have sent for my lawyer. He will be able to tell me better than anyone what all this means.”

“I am so sorry,” Carina said and, to her surprise, she meant it.

She was sorry to see what, in its way, was a great Empire fall to someone like Sir Percy Rockley. As she said the words, she knew that, for the first time, she was speaking to Lord Lynche as an ordinary man and not as a tyrant she hated and despised because of his attitude to Dipa and his mother.

“What is more it is a debt of honour,” Lord Lynche went on, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “That means it must be paid at once and no doubt Percy will extract his pound of flesh. There will be no time to notify the tenants, no time to let the pensioners and the old retainers know that I can no longer support them.”

“Surely,” Carina protested, “Sir Percy will – ”

Lord Lynche held up his hand to stop her.

“You have met Percy Rockley,” and his voice was sarcastic and bitter. “Can you imagine him making any concessions or showing any kindness of heart to me or to anyone else?”

“I thought he was your friend,” Carina said in a bewildered voice.

“Friend!” Lord Lynche repeated. “People like Percy have no friends. They have acquaintances and they are all fools like me who think that he is amusing because he helps to pass an idle hour.”

“Is that why you had him here?” Carina asked.

“I had him because he helped me to forget,” Lord Lynche replied.

There was silence and Carina wondered what it was that he had to forget. Was it Chi-Yun, the dancing girl he had once loved so passionately? Or were there other and far more sinister things from which he had sought oblivion by drinking, gambling and keeping company with rakes and libertines?

Lord Lynche was striding up and down the carpet, talking half to himself and half to Carina.

She realised that the pain he was enduring was almost unbearable.