"Miss Dacey?" she said, coming forward, right hand extended. "This is a most unorthodox way to meet, but I am so obliged to you for coming. Henry was very taken with you the other evening and mentioned that you hoped to meet me. I hope you have not come merely out of the kindness to a poor pregnant lady who is confined to the house."

"Indeed I have not, ma'am," Rosalind assured her. "I do not like to be seen in public, either. I would rather be here with you than on Bond Street with my cousin Sylvia and Mrs. Laker."

Lady Elise smiled and motioned Rosalind to a chair. "Is it because of your limp?" she asked candidly.

Rosalind was surprised at her own lack of embarrassment. "Yes," she admitted. "I hate to be noticed by everyone, especially for such an ugly defect."

"I can see that it would limit your activities," Lady Elise agreed. "You would not want to walk too much in the park, I imagine, and I suppose you cannot dance. But I would advise you not to be overly conscious of the fact that you limp. When people have once noticed, they will disregard it, you may be sure. And you have other assets."

Rosalind shrugged in a resigned manner. "I know that I am ugly," she said, "but I have learned to accept the fact. All I ask is to be allowed to live my own sort of life."

Lady Elise chuckled. "And Edward will not allow you to do so. Henry said that he thought you and your guardian do not see eye to eye. I can imagine how trying it must be for you. He hates women, you know. But, my dear Miss Dacey-may I call you Rosalind? -why do you call yourself ugly? You are no such thing. It is true that you do not have the peaches-and-cream look of the typical English debutante. You must have foreign blood, do you? French?"

"Italian."

Lady Elise nodded. "You are not pretty," she said frankly. "Your hair is too dark and your features too strong. But you could be quite extraordinarily handsome if you chose. You should wear your hair high on your head and hold your shoulders back more and your chin high. And your clothes should be more carefully made to your figure." She frowned and unexpectedly wagged a finger at her guest. "I would wager that you are deliberately hiding a good figure. Am I right?"

Rosalind did not know how to reply. She was saved from her embarrassment when Lady Elise laughed suddenly. "My manners have certainly gone begging," she said. "Goodness, we have just met. It is most impertinent of me to pick you apart the way I just did. Please forgive me. Put it down to my condition. I am living in a rather unreal world at the moment, where the usual rules do not apply."

Rosalind immediately relaxed. The conversation switched to a discussion of the coming event and Elise's fervent hope that she would bear a boy. She assured Rosalind, though, that Henry would not be at all disappointed with a girl. The visit lasted for more than an hour. Rosalind felt as if she had known her new friend for years. She promised to return the following week, after the ball, if the new arrival had still not put in an appearance.

The visit to Lady Martel occupied only a single afternoon. Rosalind helped keep her mind off the ball for much of the rest of the time by busying herself with music and reading. She paid a few visits to the library at times when she knew that the earl was not at home. She discovered a volume of Mr. Pope's poems and carried it off to her room, where she spent many hours reading his poems carefully. She thoroughly enjoyed "The Rape of the Lock" and read it many times. But on the whole she found his tone unnecessarily caustic. Much of what he wrote was the product of a bitter mind. And he had had some deformity, she had read somewhere. She shuddered. She hoped she would never allow her physical condition to warp her mind or her attitude to life.

And she spent many hours in the music room. She was fascinated by the harpsichord and played it often. It was especially suited to the music of Bach, she found. But it was the pianoforte that became her particular love. She played Haydn, Mozart, all the music she had ever learned, in fact. And she sang to her own accompaniment. She sang old ballads and newer love songs.

In the music room she could completely forget herself. It was a large room at the far end of a wing of the house that contained none of the apartments that were in daily use. The instruments stood in the middle of the room, far from windows and doors. Here she could play and sing undisturbed and undetected. Here she could be happy and forget such things as balls and society and stubborn, arrogant guardians.

She would not have felt so contented had she known that on an afternoon three days before the ball the Earl of Raymore, on his way to his room to change from his riding clothes into an outfit more suited for dining out, heard the distant sound of music. He stopped in his tracks and listened. His jaw set in annoyance when he realized that the sounds were coming from the music room. Only carefully selected guests, including the professional performers that he invited to play at his annual concerts, were allowed to touch the instruments there. One of his wards must be tinkling away in her best schoolroom manner. What sacrilege!

He changed direction grimly and strode toward the door of the music room. It was probably Rosalind Dacey. She was the one who fancied herself as an accomplished musician, he seemed to remember. He would make it perfectly clear to her that she was welcome to practise in the drawing room when he was not there, but that the music room was very definitely out of bounds.

He stopped just outside the door, his hand stretched toward the handle but not quite touching it. She was singing. He did not recognize either the words or the melody, but the song was so simple and so haunting that it halted his progress completely:

Raymore felt a momentary sharp pang whose source and meaning he could not identify. She should always sing. She had a contralto voice that was soft and throbbing with feeling. It was sheer beauty.

The song was finished. The earl's hand had fallen to his side, but he still stood and listened as she continued to play the melody. After a while she began to hum again.

When she started to play Beethoven, the Earl of Raymore moved away from the room without opening the door. She was good, he was forced to admit. He would leave her alone with her music. She could probably do no harm to his prize possessions, after all.

He did not intend to, he did not particularly want to, but he found his feet taking him toward the door of the music room for the following two afternoons. The first time she was playing the harpischord. He did not hear it very often. Most of his guests avoided it as an outdated instrument inferior in versatility to the pianoforte. But she made Bach sound brilliant, as if the harpsichord were the only instrument that would bring his music to full life. The seconcP time she was singing again, an old ballad of valor and love and death. She made him feel all the grandeur and all the pathos of the old story. That must be how the ballads had been sung all those years ago, when song had been the chief method of communicating news as well of entertaining.

Raymore retreated abruptly when the music stopped and did not immediately resume. He had no wish to be caught spying or, indeed, to come face to face with his ward. Rosalind Dacey, musician, he had been forced to recognize and respect in the last few days. Rosalind Dacey, the woman, was a different matter altogether. He could live quite happily if he never encountered her again.