‘If I only had known!’ Margaret said again and again afterwards. But of course she did not know. No one, thank heaven, ever does.
Richard had never been to Seville before. His first visit, some ten years earlier, had been along the southern coast, Malaga, Algeciras and Cadiz. The second time, five years ago, had taken him into the Basque country and as far south as Madrid and Toledo. At present his favourite town in Spain was Segovia, but he had stayed there only two days because Margaret was homesick for Cumberland. He looked back on it as a lovely city of silver-grey stone, flowers and green trees. He wouldn’t mind settling there, he had told Margaret, for a year or two.
He was thinking of Segovia this first morning in Seville. He had slipped out of his hotel without letting the women
