She put up her hand and touched the wreath on her head and then said with a smile,
“I am so glad I can hold my own with all the important and distinguished people who will be there tonight. I so very nearly sold this when we first married and were very poor before your father was recognised as a great musician, but he insisted on my keeping it and now I am glad I did.”
It was not because it was valuable, Zoia knew, but because it stood for everything that her mother had given up for love.
‘This was Mama’s Imperial Splendour,’ she thought. ‘Tonight it will be mine and maybe I shall never go to a ball like this again.’
She was certain that, when they reached France with the War still raging, there would be few festive occasions at which people would be dressed as they would be tonight.
