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the lamp, and the huge place seemed to echo about her. Suddenly she could hear how full it was of creaks and strange noises. It had stood here for hundreds of years, and seen all manner of history, births, deaths, perhaps even murders. Was it really fanciful to imagine that a ghost or two might walk?
    Well, suppose it did, she thought. She was drunk from her victory, exhilarated at giving free rein to something too long repressed in her nature. She had stood up for herself. And she had won. She was ready to take on any ghost.
    It felt like being reborn as another person, and she wished there was somebody that she could tell. But who would understand?
    He would, she thought suddenly. She had known the Earl for only a few hours, yet instinct told her that she could confide this new feeling to him and he would sympathise.
    If only he would return home so that she could talk to him!
    Now she had a chance to contemplate him at leisure, which she found herself very willing to do. There was delight in considering his tall, upright body, hardened by years on active service in the Navy.
    She liked too the way he held his head, as though there was nobody alive whose eye he feared to meet. That was how a man ought to look.
    His face was pleasing with its blunt, good looking features, and the amiable grin that was seldom far from his lips. His eyes were full of warmth and humour, and he seemed to laugh as easily as he breathed.
    That had been startling at first. He spoke with a kind of half comical inflection, as though a remark could be amusing or not, depending on how his listener took it.
    And Rena had discovered that dear Papa must have been right all along. She really did have a shocking inclination to levity, for part of her instinctively responded to this way of talking with a humour of her own.
    Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a man like this. In fact nothing had prepared her for men of any kind.
    The only man she had known well had been her father, who had taken life and the world with great earnestness.
    Her parents had been devoted to each other. Rena had liked nothing better than hearing Mama tell how she and Papa had fallen in love.
    It had been just like Romeo and Juliet, for the Sunninghills had not been at all pleased when their daughter fell in love with the young clergyman who had come to assist the elderly vicar in the church they visited every Sunday.
    â€œYour father was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen,” her mother said. “He told me he fell in love with me from the moment he saw me moving into the family pew we always occupied.”
    â€œSo you both fell in love with each other at the same time,” Rena said.
    â€œI suppose we did, but I didn’t know it then, because we didn’t get the chance to speak for several weeks.”
    With a shy smile she had added, “Then when we met, he told me later he was so overcome by shyness that he couldn’t say more than a word or two.”
    â€œI understood because I felt the same. I wanted to talk to him but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The first time he came with the vicar to tea, neither he nor I said anything to each other.”
    â€œBut you were excited at meeting him, Mama?” Rena had questioned.
    â€œSo excited that I think I dreamt of him every night until we met again. But that was a long time.”
    Finally when her parents gave a garden party, she somehow managed, although she could never remember quite how, to show him the strawberry bed. For the first time they had been alone together.
    â€œHow long was it, Mama, before he told you he loved you?”
    â€œIt seemed to me as if it took a thousand years. I admitted to myself I loved your father but was not certain if he loved me.”
    â€œBut finally he told you so,” Rena said.
    â€œYes, and I felt as if he took me into the sky and we were together in heaven. I hope, my darling, it will one day, happen to