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were almost covered with purple bougainvillaea so that Abe had to pull it aside to find the entrance to the stalls.
    Grania dismounted, leaving Abe to unsaddle the horse she had ridden and lift the trunks from the other two horses.
    She suspected that in a short while the slaves would be awake and there would be somebody to assist him, but for the moment she was interested only in going into the house.
    She went up the steps to the back door seeing that they badly needed repairing, and the door itself looked dilapidated with the paint peeling from the heat.
    The key turned easily and she pushed open the door and walked inside.
    As she had expected, the house smelt musty, but not as badly as it might have done.
    She walked in through the back premises past the large kitchen which her mother had always insisted be kept spotlessly clean, then into the hall.
    The house was not as dusty as she had expected, although it was hard to see in the dim light.
    She opened the door into what had been the Drawing-Room.
    To her surprise the sofas were not protected as they should have been by Holland covers, the curtains were drawn back from the windows and the shutters were not closed.
    She thought it was careless of Abe not to have taken more trouble over this particular room.
    But it certainly did not seem to have come to very much harm, although it was difficult to see every detail.
    Grania instinctively tidied a cushion that was crooked on a chair, then she told herself that before she started opening up the house she had better change.
    The day was already beginning to grow warmer, and her riding-skirt which was not of a very thin material would soon become uncomfortably heavy, while the muslin blouse she was wearing had sleeves.
    She thought she would have grown out of all the clothes she had left behind but there would doubtless be something of her mother’s she could wear.
    When they had left for London the Countess had not packed her light cottons gowns knowing she would have no use for them there, and they would also be out of fashion.
    “I will put on one of Mama’s gowns,” Grania told herself. “Then I will start to make the house look as it used to be before we left.”
    She went to the Drawing-Room and up the stairs.
    A rather beautiful staircase swept round artistically and up to a landing on which the centre room had been specially designed for her mother.
    As she neared it Grania was thinking of how it was to this room she had always run eagerly as a child first thing in the morning, as soon as she was dressed by the coloured maid who looked after her.
    Her mother would be in bed propped against the pillows that were edged with lace and had insertions through which she would thread pretty coloured ribbons to match her nightgowns.
    “You look so pretty in bed, Mama, you might be going to a Ball,” Grania said once.
    “I want to look pretty for your father,” her mother had replied. “He is a very handsome man, dearest, and he likes a woman to be pretty and always to make the best of herself. You must remember that.”
    Grania had remembered, and she knew that her father was proud of herself too when he took her to St. George’s and his friends paid her compliments and said that when she grew up she would be the Belle of the island.
    Grania in her own mind had always connected her father with things that were beautiful, and she asked herself now how he could possibly contemplate marrying her off to a man who was not only ugly in appearance, but ugly also in character.
    She opened the door of the bedroom and was once again surprised to find the shutters drawn from the large windows that covered one wall of the room.
    Through them she could see the palm trees against a sky that now held a tinge of gold in it.
    There was a fragrance in the room that she had always connected with her mother, and she knew that it was the scent of jasmine whose small star-shaped white flowers bloomed all the year round.
    Her mother had