“No – nothing like that.”

“What, then? Tell me what it was, I am curious.”

“I cannot think why,” she answered. “And if there was – something – it is not the only reason I dislike men. There is plenty to dislike about them. But I suppose in every girl’s life there has to be a first time when one realises that they are all – untrustworthy and bestial.”

Skye’s voice was suddenly very bitter and El Diablo, watching, saw her eyes darken, her lips tighten as if at the memory of something very painful.

“How old were you?” he asked gently.

“Just seventeen,” she replied, “but I suppose I seemed younger. I had seen – very little of the world. I had been kept in the schoolroom and not allowed to be social in any way. Aunt Hilda had old-fashioned ideas about that sort of thing – and then he came to stay.”

“Who did?”

“David Standish – he was a distant cousin. He had been injured in a car accident and came to us to convalesce. He was much older than I – twenty-eight or twenty-nine. At the same time he was the first young man I had ever known well.”

“And you fell in love with him?”

“I suppose you would call it that – he was brilliant, amusing, good-looking and everything a man should be. I sat at his feet worshipping him. I can see now how much it must have amused him. He told me I was pretty – and no one had ever told me that before. He made a fuss of me and Aunt Hilda didn’t seem to mind. I suppose she thought that I was only a child and that I could not possibly take such nonsense seriously. But I didn’t think it was nonsense. My whole world was – transformed. I grew up overnight, as it were.”

Skye drew a deep breath. She was thinking back over those days, seeing the green lawns sloping down to the river, the delphiniums in the herbaceous border and David walking slowly round looking at them, his arm through hers, teasing her, making her laugh.

“Go on!” El Diablo’s voice commanded her.

Somehow it might have been David’s, ordering her about in the way she had loved.

“That’s all,” Skye said flatly. “I thought he loved me. I was so stupid, so inexperienced – how could I think anything else? He kissed me – and they were not cousinly kisses – the night before he went away, in the summer house behind the tennis court. I thought by that he meant me to marry him. I nearly told Aunt Hilda the next morning after he had gone. Then I decided that I would keep it a secret – his secret and mine! It was too wonderful for anyone else to know about for the moment.”

“What happened then?”