It was very beautiful and yet it seemed to Ajanta as if it warned her of danger, the danger of what she was doing, the danger of subterfuge, the danger of stepping out of her own particular little world into the one occupied by the Marquis.
‘I have been very foolish to agree to this,’ she told herself. ‘I did try not to at the beginning.’
She thought it had in fact been a battle between them in which she had been defeated.
Because she was worried about her sister and about her own immediate future, she found it difficult to enthuse as she should have done over the beautiful gown that the maid brought from the wardrobe for her to put on.
Mrs. Flood and Charis came into the room just as Ajanta was being buttoned up at the back and it was their admiration as well as her reflection in the
