CHAPTER TWELVEGardenia spent the night in tears. After she had almost dragged the Duchesse upstairs to their suite at the hotel, her aunt had collapsed completely.
Gardenia had to undress her and get her into bed. Owing to the champagne she had drunk and the shock of realising that she had lost at cards, the Duchesse was now past coherence or conversation.
Gardenia therefore did her work in silence and then went into her own room and closed the door. Only when she was undressed and had pulled back the curtains to look out over the sea had the tears come coursing down her face and she cried with the abandonment of a small child.
She told herself that she was crying over the hopeless position her aunt was now placed in, over her fear for their future and the disastrous circumstances which
