Alcira was several years younger than her sister. Between them there had been two sons, but they had not lived. Nor had the two boys whom the Duchess had borne before Anna Louisa.
The Duchess was delicate and it had seemed to her a miracle when Anna Louisa lived, the first of her children who had done so. Then Alcira was born and, although the Duchess wanted to love her second daughter just as much as her first, the child had never seemed to evoke the same tenderness and the same overwhelming love that Anna Louisa seemed to command so effortlessly from everyone she knew.
When Anna Louisa ran away, Doña Alcira was just beginning to be conscious of her own beauty and, because of it, she had been glad that her sister had gone.
And her gladness had increased when she realised what a differe
