The Fire of Love

“Do you really think that matters?” she asked. “I love you – I think I have loved you since the very first moment I saw you. I thought then that I hated you intensely – but I did not listen to what my heart was telling me. Do you think that money, position, a title – anything – is of importance, except that I am yours –yours to follow you wherever in the world you may care to go?”

“What is a beetle?” Dipa asked. “I know, same as little bee. I not beetle, I big boy!”

“Is that the child?” Nanny asked.

She was looking at Dipa, Carina realised, with something like horror in her eyes.

There was no doubt that he did not look like the conventional child a Governess would be expected to tutor.

In the mistaken idea of making him look English, Mrs. Bagot had dressed him for the journey in a blue serge sailor suit with a wide naval collar and he had a little sailor cap to wear with it. It made him look ludicrous and accentuated the yellow of his skin and the strangeness of his cropped head.

“He has a velvet suit in his case with a real lace collar for best,” Mrs. Bagot explained, “but I thought you wouldn’t want him to wear it in the train, he might be sick over it.”

“No – no – of course not,” Carina had agreed, thankful not to have to make a decision about Dipa’s clothes. But now she was wondering if the velvet suit would not have been more becoming.

Dipa saw Carina standing in the doorway and waved to her.

“Hurry, hurry!” he called, “or we miss train!”

“That child is Eastern!” Nanny murmured in a low voice so that Dipa could not hear.

“It’s all right, Nanny,” Carina said hastily. “Don’t worry.”

Now the moment of parting had come.