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finish my education. It was what my mother had wished. A year there, say, and then we would see.
    He went off to join his regiment and take part in the Zulu War.
    Six months later we heard that he had been killed.
    â€œHe died as he would have wished to die,” said Aunt Charlotte.
    I did not mourn as I did for my mother. By this time he had become a stranger to me.
    ***
    I was seventeen. Aunt Charlotte was now my only relative, as she was fond of telling me, and I relied on her. I was beginning to think that to some extent she relied on me; but this was never mentioned.
    The household seemed to have changed little in the ten years since I had first walked through that gate in the red wall, but life had changed drastically for me, though not for the inhabitants of the Queen’s House. They were nearly all ten years older, it was true. Ellen was now twenty-five; Mrs. Buckle had had her first grandchildren; Mrs. Morton looked almost exactly the same; Miss Beringer was now thirty-nine. Aunt Charlotte seemed to have changed less than any of us, but then I had always seen her as the grim old woman she appeared to be at that time. There is something timeless about the Aunt Charlottes of the world; they are born old and shrewd and stay so until the end.
    I had discovered the reason why Redvers Stretton was at Castle Crediton. Ellen had told me on my sixteenth birthday because I was, as she said, no longer a child and it was time I started learning something about life which I couldn’t from a lot of worm-eaten old furniture. This was because I was increasing my knowledge considerably and even Aunt Charlotte was beginning to have a mild respect for my opinions.
    â€œHe’s got a sort of right to be up at the Castle,” Ellen told me one day when we were sitting on the seat looking across the river to that pile of gray stone, “but it’s what you might call a left-handed right.”
    â€œWhat on earth is that, Ellen?”
    â€œAh, Miss Clever, you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”
    I said humbly that I would. And I heard the story. You had to learn about men, Ellen informed me. They were different from women; they could do certain things which while deplorable and not exactly right were to be forgiven if performed by men, whereas if a woman had done the same thing she would have been cut off from society. The fact was that Sir Edward was a very manly man.
    â€œHe was very fond of the ladies.”
    â€œThe ships you mean?”
    â€œNo, I don’t. I mean flesh and blood ladies. He’d been married to Lady Crediton for ten years and there was no child. It was a blow. Well, to cut a long story short. He took a fancy to his wife’s lady’s maid. They say he wanted to know whose fault it was, his or his wife’s that there weren’t any children, because what he wanted most of all was a son. It was a bit comic in a way…if you can think of anything so sinful as being comic. Lady Crediton found that at long last she was going to have a child. So was the lady’s maid.”
    â€œAnd what did Lady Crediton say to that?” I pictured her seated in her chair, hands folded on her lap. Of course she would have looked different then. A young woman. Or comparatively young.
    â€œThey always said she was a clever woman. She wanted a son the same as he did, for the business, you see. And she was nearly forty. It was the very first and that is not the best time for having children, not first ones at least.”
    â€œAnd the lady’s maid?”
    â€œShe was twenty-one. Sir Edward was cautious. Besides he wanted a son. Suppose Lady Crediton was to have a girl and the lady’s maid a son. You see, he was greedy. He wanted them both. And Lady Crediton, well, she’s a strange woman and it seems they came to terms. The two babies were to be born at about the same time and they were both going to be born in the Castle.”
    â€œHow very