drew in a deep breath.
“You are right,” she agreed. “‘That Frenchwoman’ as you call her, changed him completely. I gather from this letter that he was not staying in Nice under his own name, which means that he did not wish to meet any of his old friends.”
“How could she have a hold over him so – quickly?” Carolyn asked in bewilderment.
Her sister did not reply.
Two years older than Carolyn, she was aware that Yvette, whom her father had met in Paris, had swept him off his feet.
He had gone to Paris because he was so desperately unhappy after his wife’s death and he found their home intolerable to live in.
“I see your mother in every room,” he had muttered to his older daughter. “I find myself calling for her as I come in through the front door and I just cannot sleep at night because she is not beside me.
Before he could say the next words, Amalita knew what they would be.
“I must go away,” Sir Frederick Maulpin said. “I must try and get control of myself, but I cannot stay here and go mad.”
There was an agony as he spoke that told his daughter he was speaking the truth.
“You are so right. Papa,” she said gently. “You should go away and I know when you come back that things will seem different.”
She helped him to pack up his boxes and Sir Frederick had left the next day.
He did not take his valet with him and Amalita knew that it was because he was trying hard to forget everything that his home had meant to him for twenty-one years.
Because she was older than her sister and so closer to their father, he had told her that he had been a somewhat raffish young man in his youth.
She guessed that he had had very many love affairs, enjoyed himself in London and travelled on the Continent whenever he felt like it.
He was indeed well off.
He could afford all the perquisites for the pleasure of a handsome, hearty young man who had nothing better to do than to enjoy himself.
He had a stable full of fine horses and he hunted with two of the best packs in the County of Leicestershire.
He had two or three horses that had won several minor races.
He played polo and belonged to two of the smartest Gentleman’s Clubs in St. James’s, White’s and Boodles.
Amalita knew without his telling her that he had been on the lists as a most eligible bachelor of every important hostess in London.
When he went to stay in France or any other country in Europe, he was able to stay at the British Embassy.
He was the guest of noble families in many countries he visited.
He was the eighth Baronet and the family was known as one of the oldest and most respected in England.
Queen Victoria frequently invited him to luncheon and dinner parties at Windsor Castle.
Then, so unexpectedly that it surprised even him, he fell head-over-heels in love.
Amalita knew only too well that her mother had been overwhelmingly beautiful, but not of great social standing.
Her father was a gentleman and a Country Squire.
He had, however, never aspired to shine brightly in the smartest Society in which he moved.
Having lost his heart, his character and his personality changed.
He bought a pretty black and white Medieval house in Worcestershire with a large estate and settled down there with the woman he loved.
He forgot the friends who had been so close to him in London.
The only disappointment in all the years that followed was that he did not have a son.
His first-born was a daughter who resembled him.
He christened her “Amalita” because he thought that she looked like a Greek Goddess.
She was quite different from her mother in that she had dark hair with strange lights in it and her eyes were the green-grey of the sea.
“She is just so lovely,” Sir Frederick declared, “that I really believe, my darling, that she is a gift from God.”
Their second daughter, Carolyn, who was born two years later, closely resembled Elizabeth Maulpin.
She also had a very sweet and gentle character, which made everyone she met love her as they loved her mother.
Amalita could be fiery and forceful, so like her father. She also had his imagination and his acute intelligence.
It amazed him, having all these fine attributes, that he should be content with one woman in the country.
In some extraordinary way it was as if they were the complete complement of each other.
It was her father who had told Amalita about what the Greeks believed in.
When man was first created, he was alone in the world and wanted a companion. So the Gods cut him in half.
Always for the rest of his existence he looked for the woman who was the other half of himself so that he would become whole again.
That was certainly what her father and mother were, Amalita felt and she could never recall them quarrelling or even arguing with each other.
Arguing was what she enjoyed when she grew older and her father found it most amusing that she had the same sharp brain that he had.
She also had an intuition that made them duel often with each other in words.
“When you do marry, my darling,” he had said to her once, “I hope you will find a man who will not only adore you but also stimulate your mind in the same way that you stimulate mine.”
Just a year ago, however, disaster had struck them.
It was an extremely cold winter.
However strong the fires blazed away in the house and timber was cut up to provide warmth, Elizabeth Maulpin succumbed to the freezing atmosphere and retired to bed.
It was unlike her not to be at her husband’s side.
Sir Frederick, for the very first time, seemed to be at a loose end.
So it was Amalita who had ridden out with him at the strangest hours just because he could not think of anything else to do.
“Mama will soon be better, Papa,” she would say to cheer him up.
Lying in the comfortable bed with its silk curtains and gold corola above it, Elizabeth Maulpin seemed to shrink away day by day.
Finally
