She smiled mockingly as she added,
“I expect he plans to say goodbye to one of his flirts. I wonder if it is the widow with whom he was enamoured at one time, or a very delectable red-head I saw him with one night at a theatre?”
Torilla was quite certain it was neither of these women and what the Marquis was really avoiding was a small intimate dinner party at which she would be present.
‘I should have gone North before the wedding,’ she thought, but it had been impossible to leave Beryl and now she was glad she had not done so.
She felt that in some way it had been a relief for Beryl to tell her the truth, and it swept away much of the anxiety she had felt about her cousin’s character having altered since she had been such a success in London.
It hurt her to think of Beryl’s unhappin
