It was then that Valeda began to be really frightened and was sure that something very untoward was happening.
It struck her for the first time that perhaps she should not have obeyed the strange man when he had more or less ordered them to return. She should have questioned him further as to who he was and who had sent him.
However, he had been very firm in his insistence that they should return immediately to the house, which she had taken for granted was the Marquis’s. It had never occurred to her for one moment that there was anything odd about it, except to suppose that Hermione wanted her, and Hermione invariably got her own way.
“What is the matter, Miss Warde?” Mirabelle asked. “Why have you stopped telling me the story?”
“I was just wondering where we were going,” Valeda repli
