Living among her new family made Trix ashamed to discover how much pretty fabrics and a graceful line in the turn of a shirtwaist meant to her. She found herself taking out an Indian shawl and burying her face in it. The faint sandalwood from the chest it lived in at home in Calcutta brought tears to her eyes.
‘Quite unsuitable,’ her mother-in-law dismissed it the first evening she put the shawl on to go down to dinner. ‘Have you nothing less heathen?’ With a rebellious heart Trix put on her sweetest smile. She wouldn’t set a foot wrong if she could help it.
Aunt Christiana’s house lacked even the simple charm of a setting in the Melrose countryside. A dark tower of a town house, where, Trix suspected, the air was haunted by the steam of suet puddings boiled hour after hour in sodden clo
