“That would explain it,” the maid exclaimed. “You don’t look English and that’s a fact, miss.”
Oletha smiled to herself.
She had often imagined when she had seen herself in the mirror with her hair hanging over her shoulders and reaching to her waist that she in some way resembled the Sirens who had tried to entice Ulysses into danger and to evade them he had himself roped to the mast of his ship.
‘I wonder if the Duke regards me as a Siren?’ she pondered.
Then she told herself that she was being very conceited.
“He hopes that I will be useful to him and that is the reason why he is being so pleasant not because, like Captain Goring, he wishes to flirt with me.”
The Captain had certainly been most effusive all evening and yet Oletha had been aware that his charm was only surface deep
