She had actually gone to the Mother Superior and suggested that, as she was so much older than the other girls, perhaps it would be best if her work was not considered in the award of prizes.

“That is very unselfish of you, Honora,” the Mother Superior answered, “but we really cannot alter the rules of the school just for one person, who should have left by now.”

“I know that, Reverend Mother,” Honora replied, “but what am I to do? My aunt, who is very beautiful and still quite young, has no wish to chaperone me and I have no other relatives who would wish me to live with them.”

The Reverend Mother’s eyes had softened, for she realised only too well why the Countess of Langstone, who was an acknowledged Social beauty, did not want her niece.

Another woman, even if only slightly attractive, would be a rival.

But in fact Honora in the last two years had grown and developed until she had, the Reverend Mother thought, not only a very lovely face but also a character to match it.

There was nobody in the school who was a better influence or whom the younger girls admired more.

The Mother Superior knew that if Honora was her daughter she would be very worried at her being plunged straight from the quiet security of the Convent into the Social circle of which her aunt was the leader.

At the same time everybody knew that the Queen of England and her husband, Prince Albert, were a model couple who were an example of all that was best and finest in married life.

The Reverend Mother found herself praying that Honora, whom she had grown to love, would marry a decent man and not anybody with a reputation like those of the Queen’s uncles, which had scandalised all Europe.

Aloud she said,

“I know, Honora, that wherever you go, whatever you do, you will remember what we have taught you here and follow the dictates of your conscience.”

“I will try, Reverend Mother,” Honora replied.

The other girls who had gone home in the holidays to Paris, Rome, Madrid and other gay Cities were very voluble about the parties, balls and receptions that their parents gave.

They also whispered about handsome young men who paid them attention even though they were still at school.

‘I am so ignorant about such things!’ Honora thought helplessly.

She hoped, although she thought it unlikely, that her aunt would help her and instruct her as her mother would have done.

‘If only Papa was alive,’ she thought wistfully as she travelled across France remembering how dashing he had been and how he had laughed at everything, even his debts.

“Something will turn up,” he would say loftily when tradesmen were pressing him and he would wonder where his next penny was coming from.

“That is a gambler’s outlook, Papa,” she said to him once.

Harry Lang laughed before he replied,

“All life is a gamble. Sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down and the only thing to do is to take it all philosophically and believe that eventually, whatever the odds against you – you will win!”