“Pauline had one very unfortunate vice,” Jimmy went on. “She was an inveterate gambler. There’s Irish blood in the Donaldsons and Pauline, like many of our forbears, would gamble on anything. She could never resist poker and soon after she married Sir Rupert had to settle her debts for a fairly considerable sum. But he made her promise that she would never play again.

“He went fishing in Scotland that April and, because she was always looking for amusement, Pauline went with some friends to one of these smart gambling places in Mayfair that are responsible for so much misery and financial unhappiness. She lost over one thousand pounds. Like all gamblers she could think of nothing when she held the cards in her hand but the excitement and thrill of the game. It was only when the reckoning came that she realised what she had done. She had broken her word of honour to her husband and, what was more, it was impossible for her to meet her debts.”

“She sounds an extremely stupid person,” Skye pointed out.

“She had no money of her own and you have never known what it is to be penniless,” Jimmy said gently and she flushed at the rebuke in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” she capitulated, “one should never judge other people’s temptations by one’s own. What did she do?”

“She played for time, knowing that eventually she would have to tell her husband and ask his forgiveness, but putting off the evil hour day by day. The owner of the gambling club became unpleasant, and finally, when Pauline did not answer his letters, he arrived one evening at Bredon and threatened that, if she did not pay him there and then, he would ask her husband for the money.

“I think perhaps that the Tremayne’s marriage at that moment was undergoing one of those strained difficult periods that comes to so many couples when there is a big difference in the age. Sir Rupert was not easy to live with. He had the fiery tempestuous temper that is characteristic of all the Tremaynes. He was also a bit of a tyrant and Pauline knew that, if he heard from a stranger of the way she had broken her promises to him, he would never forgive her.

“She was almost frantic at the thought of his anger. Leaving the man who had called to see her shut away in a sitting room, she ran to find Guy. She poured out her tale of woe, begging him to help her.