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had failed to do with Evangeline, to her knees. An impulse of savagery instantly foiled by Oriel’s sweetly-spoken ‘Yes – perfectly, Miss Stangway.’
    â€˜You are sure you wouldn’t want – well – my room, perhaps? It is large and overlooks the rose-garden. Don’t hesitate to ask for it. Your mother would not.’ Maud’s temper was rising.
    â€˜How kind you are, Miss Stangway.’
    And even Maud, with her prickly self-esteem, her senses tuned so finely to detect the least hint of insult or disobedience, was not certain whether Oriel was goading her or paying a compliment.
    â€˜Kind?’
    â€˜To be so concerned. But there is really no need to pay too much attention when mamma makes a fuss about me. Where I am to sleep, or where I am to sit at dinner, or making sure my name is on every invitation. Things like that. I am her only child, you see, and we have been very much together. I suppose it worries her that I might feel neglected. And so she takes extra care – perhaps even more, sometimes, than might be needed.’
    Oriel smiled encouragingly, serenely, inviting Maud – it rather seemed – to join her in a little conspiracy to protect Evangeline from the affectionate overflow of her own maternal heart.
    â€˜Are you explaining your mother to me, child?’
    â€˜Oh no.’ Oriel looked as if such a liberty had never crossed her mind. ‘I simply did not wish you to think me disobedient, by settling myself in, after what mamma said. When she sees I am happy then it will all blow over. These things almost always do.’
    â€˜You are very loyal, Miss Blake.’
    â€˜Oh – am I? How kind of you to say so.’
    And a shade too composed, too clever by half for the taste of Miss Maud Stangway who spoke sharp words that same afternoon to her sister Letty on the subject of Evangeline Slade’s daughter, warning her that still waters of this type would be likely to run exceedingly deep.
    â€˜I believe, Letty, that we would do well to keep her away from Quentin.’ The name of Quentin, of course, being that of Letty’s much-favoured eldest son.
    â€˜My dear,’ Letty was predictably horrified. ‘Do you mean she might – well – turn his head?’
    â€˜I do. Should she find it in any way to her advantage. She would not lose her own head, either. One may be very sure of that. Like her mother before her.’
    Still waters. Calm waters. Treacherous waters, perhaps, in which any young man she decided to lure there might drown.
    But, contrary to all appearances, Oriel Blake walked through the first weeks of her new life on eggshells, a delicate process to which her old life had thoroughly accustomed her, each careful step accompanied by a careful word – the right word – and her calm, if never too radiant, smile. A pose of quiet self-confidence which had so far managed, during the twenty years of her life, to deceive everybody. Except – that is – herself.
    â€˜You are fortunate in your daughter,’ the Gore Valley told Evangeline. ‘So accomplished – so very pleasant …’ So beautiful too, although the Gore Valley, of course, was not given to making statements such as that.
    â€˜Quite the pearl beyond price,’ muttered Maud, very tight-lipped, deciding, since every jewel must surely have its flaw, to keep a sharp look-out for this one.
    â€˜Such a comfort,’ sighed Letty Saint-Charles, who found little in her own life to comfort her.
    To which Evangeline nodded her elegant head and Oriel calmly smiled.
    It was her defence against the world, that smile, whenever – as often happened – the world seemed to threaten her. An effective barrier, she had found, between her real self and the constant upheavals of her childhood which seemed to have taken place in removal-vans, post-chaises, and the domestic storms regularly created by Evangeline, with whom no maid or