CHAPTER FOURWhen Ilina left the study, the Duke sat back in his chair and stared at the portraits of the two Dukes that he could see on the walls in front of him.
He was thinking that at last he had been able to say what had been on his mind ever since he could remember.
He had always imagined that, when he did tell the Burys exactly what he thought of them, there would be a much larger audience then one young girl who had stared at him with a stricken expression in her eyes.
When he was a small boy he had longed to see the family house that had appeared to be always on his father’s lips, but whenever it was mentioned it brought a look of pain to his mother’s face.
One day when he was about eight he had said to his father,
“I want to see Tetbury Abbey, Papa. Can we go over there? How
