Her shallow, vain heart saw in this moment her chance of playing a rôle with this man, whom she told herself she hated, but who, as a matter of fact, was the one creature in the world whom she held in a place higher than herself.
“I shall have nothing to do with Polly,” she determined. “I shall write to him direct.”
And she kept her word.
An hour later one of the Wentworth grooms rode out of the grounds bearing a letter to Mr. Ambleton. Christina had written curtly enough.
“The present lamentable circumstances render it necessary that I should speak with you. Pray let me beg you to waive all objections you may have and send me word what hour you can most conveniently call upon me.”
“He will come, he can’t refuse,” she said to herself as she sealed the letter.
Then she donned a black gown and went into the room set aside for Sacha’s use as a studio.
She was strangely nervous and irritable, and Sacha found her far from a pleasant companion.
He would have been amazed indeed could he have seen into Christina’s heart, and read there the first tracings of a story destined to be written in unusual and totally unforeseen lines.