More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from my husband’s house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my outraged vanity (as I say, the woman in me), would not let me go.

Three weeks passed.

The pavilion had been built and was being hung with gaily painted bannerets to give the effect of the Colosseum as seen at sunset.  A covered corridor connecting the theatre with the house was being lined with immense hydrangeas and lit from the roof by lamps that resembled stars.

A few days before the day fixed for the event Alma, who had been too much occupied to see me every day in the boudoir to which I confined myself, came up to give me my instructions.

The entertainment was to begin at ten o’clock.  I was to be dressed as Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room.  At the sound of a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line of pages, and accompanied by my husband.  After we had taken our places in a private box a great ballet, brought specially from a London music-hall, was to give a performance lasting until midnight.  Then there was to be a cotillon, led by Alma herself with my husband, and after supper the dancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful of butterflies and doves (sent from the South of France) were to be liberated from cages, and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through the sunlit space.

I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and the object which I supposed it was intended to serve.

The end of it all was that I wrote to my father, concealing the real cause of my suffering, but telling him he could not possibly be aware of what was being done in his name and with his money, and begging him to put an end to the entertainment altogether.

The only answer I received was a visit from Nessy MacLeod.  I can see her still as she came into my room, the tall gaunt figure with red hair and irregular features.

“Cousin Mary,” she said, seating herself stiffly on the only stiff-backed chair, and speaking in an impassive tone, “your letter has been received, but your father has not seen it, his health being such as makes it highly undesirable that he should be disturbed by unnecessary worries.”

I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been unnecessary, but urgent and important, and if she persisted in withholding it from my father I should deliver it myself.

“Cousin Mary,” said Nessy, “I know perfectly what your letter is, having opened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself in sympathy with what is going on here, I happen to know that your father has set his heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do not choose that it shall be put off.”

I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had taken an unwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I asked her by what right did she, who had entered my father’s house as a dependent, dare to keep his daughter’s letter from him.