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little older.”
    He paused and then said somewhat uncomfortably: “She said if you were in need of help in the house she would be only too glad to oblige you.”
    “I am sure she would,” Lalitha’s mother said swiftly, “but we have everyone we need at the moment.”
    Lalitha had not seen Mrs. Clements, which was apparently what the new tenant called herself, until after her mother had died.
    Then unexpectedly she had arrived and offered her services when things were most difficult.
    Two of the older servants had retired, so they were shorthanded.
    Then there was an epidemic of fever that Winter and it was quite impossible for three of the remaining staff to keep their feet.
    Sir John had not seemed to care.
    He sat gloomy and uncooperative, drinking in his study or riding out to neighbouring Inns from which he returned invariably so drunk that he had to be helped up to bed.
    Mrs. Clements had asked Lalitha if she could assist, and because she was so desperate the offer had been accepted.
    She had proven to be a tower of strength keeping the household going, and managing Sir John in a manner which aroused Lalitha’s admiration.
    It seemed as if only Mrs. Clements could persuade him to eat as well as drink.
    It was Mrs. Clements who had the fire burning brightly in his study and his comfortable slippers waiting for him when he returned from riding.
    It was Mrs. Clements who could persuade him to make a decision about the Estate when he would not listen to anyone else.
    When Sir John was brought home dying after his accident it was only natural that Lalitha should turn to the older woman for help.
    “I’ll look after him, dear. Don’t you worry,” she had said.
    Lalitha, white-faced and incoherent with tears, had been content to let her manage things her way.
    Afterwards Lalitha used to think that she should have realised what was happening.
    But Mrs. Clements, soft-voiced, sympathetic, and compassionate, would have deceived a far more astute and worldly person than sixteen-year-old Lalitha.
    She moved into the house and her daughter came with her.
    Sophie put herself out to be as charming to Lalitha as her mother was, and Lalitha found in the incredibly beautiful girl the companion of her own age she had never had.
    Only sometimes she thought that Sophie was rather highhanded, borrowing her clothes and even taking away some small trifles such as gloves, scarves, and ribbons without asking her permission.
    Then Lalitha told herself that she was being selfish. She had so much and Sophie had nothing.
    It was after Sir John died, the funeral over and his friends gone, that Mrs. Clements showed herself in her true colours.
    The house was very quiet and Lalitha, wandering round in her black dress, thought how utterly and completely alone she was now that both her father and mother were gone.
    She realised that she must sit down and write to her mother’s brother who had moved from Norfolk to Cornwall.
    Many years previously he had bought an Estate for himself and had remained there even after his father had died.
    Her mother had always planned that they would one day go and visit him.
    “You will love Ambrose!” she told her daughter. “He is older than I, and I think it was he who taught me to love the country so much that I was never tempted by the Social whirl of London.”
    But somehow there had never seemed to be time or enough money to go to Cornwall and there had been no question of her Uncle coming to them.
    He had not even attended her mother’s funeral although he had sent a wreath and a long letter to her father telling him how deeply he regretted his sister’s death.
    “I must write to Uncle Ambrose now,” Lalitha told herself. “Perhaps he will ask me to come and live with him.”
    She had actually sat down at her father’s desk in the study and opened the blotter when Mrs. Clements came into the room.
    “I want to talk to you, Lalitha,” she said in a tone which had an authoritative note in it