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besides, again, one visit doesn’t necessarily make a protector.’
    ‘Will he not consider it strange if I continue to accept other gentlemen’s flowers?’
    ‘I told him, that first day, that you thought nothing of it. It was the custom in Italy, where you came from.’
    ‘Keep that before him, Mother,’ said Sam. In the role of doting waiting woman, Mrs Brown could obviously be of enormous value. ‘But for heaven’s sake, let us have less of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet; and white lambs and ravening wolves for the future are out of it! Discretion, my dear madam, is the better part of histrionics. And Gilda, for you also, discretion, child, discretion… And of all things, in a crisis cast your anguished glances anywhere but at the second footman; you know that James is uncontrollable once he has a fit of laughter.’
    ‘Oh, well — he may come no more,’ said Gilda, comfortably yawning. Already the success began to seem less amusing than the pursuit had been.
    But he called again next day and this time no distressing recollections marred the delight of the evening. He remained for an hour and went away visibly enchanted. Came again and was permitted to stay even longer; took to calling every day and sometimes twice. The affair however was conducted with the utmost discretion and the admirer fortunately seemed also inclined to circumspection: to court her too openly would only suggest that the Unattainable Lady was after all as other women, and invite rivalries. And beside, there was the small matter of his betrothal to the Honourable Jane Harrington. A betrothal was almost as binding as a marriage; and to be known to be setting up house with a lady of the town even while wedding preparations went forward, would perhaps be not quite comme il faut. On the other hand…
    On the other hand — and yet perhaps for this reason — he plied her with roses, with the message oft repeated, with innumerable attentions — but so far had made no proposals. And one day Brown Eyes would return from abroad, and then… If only he had been a little less — well, whipper-snapper, thought Mrs Brown, reverting ever to her favourite epithet for him: if only Marigold had liked him just a little bit less — coolly. ‘We must think of a plan,’ she said to the boys, ‘to bring about something more positive.’ They had over-reached themselves, she suggested, in the matter of her ladyship’s birth and breeding; in fact, they’d been mad, surely, to make so much of it, to build up the supposed fortune in Italy. How could a man persuade himself that such a woman was available as a mistress?
    ‘It’s grown up gradually, from the sending of the bouquets. We were too anxious to attract only the highest; not to give the impression that she was just some cheap lorette.’
    ‘Her supposed breeding we can’t undo. The fortune, however, we might dispose of…’
    The ravening wolves therefore had better be brought back into play, the lady should be found disconsolate and sob out a tale of sudden and shattering poverty… ‘Only, let me alone with him, for heaven’s sake!’ said Gilda. ‘I’ll have no Mother MacCready white-lambing me and no sputtering footmen, either. Jake must do the honours, he can out-act any of you and still keep his countenance. I’ll account for the absence of the rest of you. But, Master Jake, so much as one grin behind your hand—!’
    They leaned over the banisters to watch him as, small and portentous in his rich page’s suit, he marched across the hall, took his lordship’s amber cane and three-cornered hat and threw open the door of the withdrawing-room. ‘My lord the Earl of Tregaron, to wait upon my lady…’ And then in a voice of most convincing dismay: ‘Oh, my lady — forgive me—!’
    For she sat there alone upon her sofa: very piteous and pale, the white dress rumpled, the grey-blue eyes made huge in her face by the darkness around them; the only colour the glow of her hair in the