Celita drew in her breath.
“Just before Judy and I left Paris,” she said, “she received a letter from her father saying that, instead of returning to England, as he had planned we should do, we were to come here.”
“I understood,” the Duc said, “that Lord Waterforde had arranged this with his daughter, but I did not realise that he had left it until the last moment.”
“It was a great shock to Judy,” Celita said, “because her father intimated that you might – while she – was staying here – propose – to her.”
Celita had great difficulty in saying the last words, but she forced them from her lips.
She did not look at the Duc.
She was aware, however, that he had risen from the chair where he had sat down beside the sofa and he was now standing with his back to the mantelpiece.
Without loo
