Odela stared at him and he continued,
“You will, of course, be married and, while it will break my heart to lose you again, I want you to be as happy as I was with your mother.”
Odela noticed that he did not say, ‘as I am with Esme’.
“I pray, Papa,” she answered, “that I will find a man I will love and who will love me as you loved Mama, but it is going to be difficult to find someone as marvellous as you.”
“Now you are flattering me,” her father laughed. “Of course you will find somebody, but at the same time you are going to find it difficult to avoid the fortune-hunters!”
“I have read about the fortune-hunters in books – and the girls at school used to laugh about the Italian aristocrats who were always on the lookout for a rich wife!”
“I am afraid there are a number of them in th
