“May I ask you,” she said, “what you think you are playing at?”

“P-please – Aunt Aline,” Honora replied, “try to understand – the Duke has no wish to marry me nor I him!”

“Do you really think, you little fool,” the Countess demanded, “that you can upset my plans and do anything but obey me?”

“You cannot – force me into a – marriage that could not be anything but – unhappy!”

“If your poverty-stricken father were alive,” the Countess replied, “he would be overwhelmed with delight that you should marry anybody so important and so rich! It would mean that he would be able to sponge on his son-in-law instead of on every other Tom, Dick and Harry he could borrow money from.”

“That is – not true,” Honora cried.

At the same time she had the uncomfortable feeling that there was a grain of truth in it and that her father would have been delighted for her to marry the Duke of Tynemouth.

“And how do you think,” the Countess continued, “that you, without a penny to your name and nothing to recommend you except that you are a Lang, are going to find another husband half as suitable as the Duke?”

“Whoever he may be,” Honora replied, “perhaps I would be – in love with him.”

“Love!” the Countess said contemptuously. “If that is the rubbish they have stuffed your head with at the Convent, then all I can say is that your uncle’s money has been wasted!”

Honora did not answer and the Countess’s eyes narrowed as she said,

“As you are obviously too half-witted to think for yourself, I intend to think for you and give you a choice.”

“A – choice?”

“Yes, a choice,” her aunt replied. “It is quite simple – either you marry the Duke as I have planned, or you go into a Convent and become a nun!”

Honora stared at her in sheer amazement as she went on,

“It would not be a nice, comfortable, rich Convent such as you have just left! One of the charities to which your uncle most generously subscribes is known as ‘The Little Sisters of the Poor’ who devote themselves to caring for the sick and poverty-stricken in the slums or wearing out their knees in prayer.”

She paused and her face was very spiteful as she went on,

“I also understand that they give up everything they possess and that should certainly be easy for you since you possess nothing anyway!”

“Are you – really suggesting,” Honora faltered, “that I should take the – v-veil?”

“That is what you will have to do,” her aunt replied, “unless of course you are prepared to starve in the gutter.”

“You – cannot mean it,” Honora said. “Please – could I have more time to – consider what I should – do?”

“There is no time,” the Countess snapped. “You must make up your mind here and now to marry the Duke or I will arrange for you to be taken tomorrow morning to the Convent.”