“Oh.” That was all she could think of to say.

It did not seem to her that he was so interested in her as Almsbury had said and since she had come half to be flattered by a man’s goggle-eyed staring, she was disappointed and bored. She paid little attention to the rest of the conversation and as soon as dinner was over escaped back to her room.

The apartments she had shared with Bruce for more than a month were dreary and deserted now, and the fact that he had so recently been there made them even lonelier. She wandered forlornly from one room to another, finding something to remind her of him everywhere she looked. There was the book he had been reading last, lying opened in a big chair. She picked it up and glanced at it: Francis Bacon’s “History of Henry VII.” There was a pair of mud-stained boots, two or three soiled white-linen shirts which carried the strong male smell of his sweat, a hat he had worn while hunting.

Suddenly Amber dropped to her knees, the hat crushed in her hands, and burst into shaking sobs. She had never felt more lonely, hopeless and despairing.

Two or three hours later when Almsbury gave a knock at the door and then came in she was stretched out on her stomach on the bed, head buried in her arms, no longer crying but merely lying there—listless.

“Amber—” He spoke to her softly, thinking that she might be asleep.

She turned her head. “Oh. Come in, Almsbury.”

He sat down beside her and she rolled over on her back and lay looking up at him. Her hair was rumpled and her eyes red and swollen, her head ached vaguely but persistently, and her expression was dull and apathetic. Almsbury’s ruddy face was now serious and kindly, and he bent to kiss her forehead.

“Poor little sweetheart.”

At the sound of his voice the tears welled irresistibly again, rolling out the corners of her eyes and streaking across her temples. She bit at her lower lip, determined to cry no longer; but for several moments they were quiet and one of Almsbury’s square hands stroked over her head.

“Almsbury,” she said at last. “Did Bruce leave without me because he’s going to get married?”

“Married? Good Lord, not that I know anything about! No, I swear he didn’t.”

She gave a sigh and looked away from him, out the windows. “But someday he’ll get married—and he says when he does he wants to make Bruce his heir.” Her eyes came back again, slightly narrowed now and suddenly hard with resentment. “He won’t marry me—but he’ll make my son his heir. A pretty fetch!” Her mouth twisted bitterly and she gave a kick of her toe at the blankets.

“But you will let him, won’t you? After all, it would be best for the boy.”

“No, I won’t let him! Why should I? If he wants Bruce, he can marry me!”

Almsbury continued to watch her for several seconds, but then all at once he changed the subject. “Tell me: What’s your opinion of Radclyffe?”

She made a face. “A nasty old slubber-degullion. I hate him. Anyway, he didn’t seem so mightily smitten by me. Why, he scarcely gave me a glance, once he’d made his leg.”

He smiled. “You forget, my dear. He belongs to another age than ours. The Court of the first Charles was a mighty formal and discreet place—ogling wasn’t the fashion there, no matter how much a gentleman might admire a lady.”

“Is he rich?”

“He’s very poor. The Wars ruined his family.”

“Then that’s why he thinks I’m so handsome!”

“Not at all. He said you’re the finest woman he’s seen in two-score years—you remind him, he says, of a lady he once knew, long ago.”

“And who can that be, pray?”

Almsbury shrugged. “He didn’t say. Some mistress he had, most likely. Men are never favourably reminded of their wives.”

She saw the Earl of Radclyffe again the next day at dinner, but now there were two more guests: a cousin of Emily’s, Lady Rawstorne, and her husband. Lord Rawstorne was a big man—about Almsbury’s height, but much heavier—with a boisterous laugh, a red face and a smell of stables about him. The moment he saw Amber he seemed delighted and throughout dinner he stared across the table at her.

His wife looked sour and discontented, as though she had watched such behaviour for a great many years and was not even yet resigned to it. And the Earl of Radclyffe, though he elaborately ignored Rawstorne and his staring at Mrs. Dangerfield, was clearly annoyed. For the most part he sat with his eyes on his plate, and regarded the food with the expression of one to whom it could mean only future distress. Amber was amused by both of them and found a sort of mischievous pleasure in flirting with Lord Rawstorne. She pouted her lower lip, slanted her eyes at him, and moved her body provocatively. But it was not a very entertaining diversion. Loneliness and boredom continued to mock at her.

As she left the table she saw Rawstorne begin to edge around from one side, trying to avoid his wife’s glowering signals and get to her, but before he could do so Radclyffe was at her side. He bowed, stiffly as a marionette whose joints had not been well oiled for years.

“Your servant, madame.”

“Your servant, sir.”

“Perhaps you recall, madame, that yesterday Lord Almsbury mentioned I had brought several objects of interest and value with me from abroad? Some of those things were in my coach and in the hope that you might honour me by looking at them I had a case unpacked last night. Would you be so kind, madame?”

Amber was about to refuse but decided that she might as well do that as go back upstairs and sit alone, and probably cry again. “Thank you, sir. I’d like to see them.”

“They’re in the library, madame.”

The great room was dark, oak-panelled and but dimly lighted. Before the fireplace there was a large table spread with several articles and next to it was a torchère; the shelves of books stood far away in the spreading gloom. Almsbury was no ardent scholar and the place smelled unaired and musty.

Amber approached the table without interest, but immediately her indifference turned to delight, for it was covered with a great number of rare and delicate and precious things. There was a small white marble statue, a Venus with the head broken off; a blackamoor carved out of ebony with an enamelled skirt of ostrich feathers and real jewels in the turban and around the thick muscular arms; a heavy gold frame, exquisitely wrought; tortoise-shell jewel-boxes and diamond buttons and dainty blown-glass perfume-bottles. Each was perfect of its kind and had been selected by a man whose taste was never-failing.

“Oh, how beautiful! Oh! Look at this!” She turned to him eagerly, eyes sparkling. “Can I pick it up if I’m careful?”

He smiled, bowed again. “Certainly, madame. Please do.”

Forgetting that she did not like him she began to ask him questions. He told her where he had found each one, what its history was, through whose hands it had passed before it had come to him. She liked the story of the blackamoor best:

“Two hundred years ago there was a Venetian lady—very beautiful, as all ladies in legends are—and she owned a gigantic black slave whom her husband believed to be a eunuch. But he was not and when the lady bore his black child she had the infant killed and a white one put in its place. The midwife, from some motive of jealousy or revenge, told the husband of his wife’s infidelity and he killed the slave before her eyes. She had the ebony statue made, secretly of course, in her lover’s memory.”

At last, when there was no more to be said, she thanked him and turned away with a sigh. “They’re all wonderful. I envy you, my lord.” She could never see a beautiful thing without longing violently to possess it.

“Won’t you allow me, madame, to make you a gift?”

She turned swiftly. “Oh, but your Lordship! They must mean a great deal to you!”

“They do, madame, I admit it. But your own appreciation is so keen I know that whichever you choose will be loved as much by you as it could be by me.”

For several moments she stared at them critically, determined to make the one choice she would not regret, deciding first on one and then another. She stood bent forward, tapping her fan on her chin, wholly absorbed. Slowly she became aware that he was watching her and gave him a swift sidelong glance, for she wanted to catch his expression before he could change it. As she had expected he glanced hastily away, refusing to meet her eyes, but nevertheless the look she had surprised on his face made the frank good-natured lust of Lord Rawstorne seem naive and artless. The repugnance she had felt the first moment of their meeting came back again, stronger than ever. What is there about this old man? she thought. He’s strange—he’s strange and nasty.

She picked up the blackamoor—which was very heavy and about two feet high—and turned to the Earl. Once more he presented to her a face cool and polite, austere as an anchorite’s.

“This is what I want,” she said.

“Certainly, madame.” She thought that a hint of a smile lurked somewhere about his thin mouth, but she could not be sure. Had her choice amused him, or was it only her imagination, perhaps a trick of the lighting? “But if you are of a timid nature, madame, perhaps another choice would be more comfortable to you. There’s an old superstition the statue’s cursed and brings ill-luck to whoever owns it.”

She glanced at him sharply, momentarily alarmed, for she was passionately superstitious and knew it. But she decided instantly that he did not want to part with the blackamoor after all and was trying to scare her into making a less valuable choice. She would have kept it now no matter what the curse might be and her eyes glittered defiance.