There was something too in her features, perhaps the height of her cheekbones, the tiny straight nose, the curve of her lips that could be entrancing when she smiled, that was also un-English.
‘I am a little like Mama,’ Alida thought, and felt a sudden warm glow of relief that she did not in fact resemble her father’s relatives.
She gave a deep sigh. Ever since she had come to The Castle, she had thought it the darkest, bleakest and unhappiest place that she could ever imagine.
It seemed to sap her strength and to encroach upon her menacingly like a dark fog so that she could never be free of the misery of it.
To her mother religion had been a joy and a comfort and to her uncle it meant the harsh threat of hellfire in the hereafter and physical punishment in this world for those he con
