The Marquis, when he saw what she had chosen, raised his eyebrows and she thought that he was not only surprised but slightly sceptical.
‘He thinks I am showing off,’ Silva said to herself. ‘But he will soon learn that I read these books because they not only instruct me but make me feel happy.’
She wondered if he would be interested to know how little formal education she had had and that mostly she had taught herself and then she decided it was something that he had best find out for himself.
Perhaps he disliked women who were clever and preferred them to be ignorant of anything except making love like the women who had pursued her father only to find that he had no interest in them if he could gamble.
He had in fact, as he told Silva, never loved anyone except his wife and anyway he
