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so I am quite unable to accommodate you,” she said. “I’m afraid this whole thing is my fault. I shouldn’t have spoken to Flora in the Piazza. I had no idea she would imagine herself so attached to me. But she will get over it. Now if you will excuse me, I have a great deal to do. I make an early start in the morning.”
    She turned and went quickly before anyone could speak. She would not weaken for the woman on the couch, whom she already unreasonably disliked, but Daniel Meryon had only to say, “Do this for me,” or the crazy spoiled forlorn little creature, Flora, to catch her hand, and she would not have been so sure of herself.
    She heard Flora’s wail, “Miss Hurst!” and Charlotte’s “Daniel, what a preposterous young woman!” and young Edward’s sudden derisive hoot, “Flora’s a crybaby!”
    It wasn’t she who was preposterous, but they.
    Nevertheless, it had been she who had deliberately sought Flora’s acquaintance on the chance of her father appearing. And he had appeared, and for a little while it had been irresistible to plunge into a forbidden excitement.
    Where was her recklessness now?
    She knew only that she would find it intolerable to be ordered about by a woman like Charlotte Meryon. She knew that type, self-indulgent, vain, clinging, and unfairly using her frailty as a weapon. If it were frailty. One couldn’t deny her loveliness. That black hair and white face and those great colorless eyes had an almost eerie beauty. Daniel must want to indulge her whims as much as he did Flora’s. Lavinia already knew it would be unbearable for her to watch that. She couldn’t assent to this impulsive scheme.
    But, had it been cruel to deny Flora? She was shockingly spoiled, to be sure, but she was also struggling with a certain amount of gallantry with her illness which, unlike her mother’s, was genuine. She had a sharp, alert mind that it would be a challenge to guide.
    You guiding an innocent child’s mind! You!
    “Didn’t you like them?” Cousin Marion asked sharply. “Please don’t be difficult now and refuse this opportunity. You might remember you’re in no position to pick and choose.”
    “I haven’t seen the Monks yet,” Lavinia answered. “It was a mistake.”
    “A mistake? How could it be? Then who did you see?”
    “Some strangers. I wasn’t the kind of person they were looking for. I told you, it was a mistake.”
    Later she did see the Monks, a thin old paper-faced couple, absurdly alike. She agreed to be ready to leave with them at seven o’clock sharp in the morning. She was wryly pleased with herself that for once in her life she was doing the sensible and conventional thing, and for the rest of the day was utterly miserable. Only Cousin Marion’s everlastingly complaining voice saying that she might at least make herself agreeable on her last evening induced her to put on the dowdy blue silk and accompany her cousin down to dinner that evening.
    She prayed that the Meryons would not be dining at the same time. Another onslaught from Flora would be too much.
    Cousin Marion, as usual, thought the waiters were too slow, the food foreign and indigestible, the room too hot. In the middle of her stream of complaints she suddenly demanded, “Who are you looking at?”
    They had come in—Charlotte and Daniel, and Edward, dressed in a smart dark blue velvet suit. There was no sign of Flora.
    Neither Charlotte nor Edward noticed her, but Daniel did. Across the room he paused to give her a slight bow, and then went on. She noticed that when they were seated he had his back to her.
    And that was the last she would see of Daniel Meryon, a pair of broad shoulders, and that square powerful head turned away from her and attentively toward his lovely wife.
    But where was Flora? Ill? Crying in her room? Having a tantrum?
    “Lavinia, I was speaking to you. Who are those people? Have you acquaintances here you didn’t tell me about?”
    “They’re only people I spoke to