“Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these mortal acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily.”

“Clever man,” murmured the Duke. “Very good, my child. Now write what thou hast read.”

Alice had never tried to write, that she could remember, but somewhere in the back of her brain, she knew that she could. She dipped the newly sharpened quill in the inkwell, bent over the paper, closed her eyes for a moment in intense concentration and began to write while the Duke watched her carefully. When she had finished, she handed him the parchment and he studied the neat Roman script in surprise.

“A scholarly hand, i’faith,” he said. “Thou hast learning somewhere in thy misty past, Alice.”

Alice beamed at him proudly. “Then my parents had learning?”

He nodded. “Someone undoubtedly did. I think we have done enough work for tonight. Before you retire, I shall leave you some copies of La Belle Assemblée and tomorrow when I am gone, you may pass the day in studying the fashions of London. I shall leave you enough food for breakfast. Ah, you cannot wear that flimsy gown. I shall find you a morning dress.”

Alice clasped her hands tightly together when he had left. She felt she should be frightened. But he was the first sympathetic person she had ever met that she could remember and so, at last, she decided to simply accept his ghostly existence without fretting her brains over the reason for this strange and unearthly manifestation.

He was soon back, another gown over his arm. “Put it on,” he ordered rather sharply. “I am not yet accustomed to the nakedness of some of these modern gowns and would prefer you more covered.”

Alice retreated again behind the screen of the bed. This ensemble was indeed less revealing and more to Alice’s taste. It was a plain cambric morning dress, high at the neck and with a short train and let in round the bottom with two rows of worked trimming. A pelisse of green sarsenet, very fitting, went over it. The pelisse was trimmed with fancy trimming and fastened with a gold brooch, confined round Alice’s small waist with a girdle of sarsenet with a gold clasp. There was a pair of walking shoes of brocaded silk to go with it, rather large for Alice’s small feet. She felt strange wearing shoes, the first time in her life that she could remember having put any on.

She emerged from the back of the bed, hoping the Duke would see a kitchen maid transformed into a lady, but he only looked at her indifferently and remarked that she “would do.”

“I shall leave you to your rest,” he said, draining off the last of the wine.