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marriage.
    Sir Ebenezer was for once at a loss. He both liked and respected the Conde de los Aguilares, and thought his son a very pleasant and well-mannered young man. He also knew the Conde to be immensely rich and of the best blood of Spain, and his wife Anne Marie to be descended from the old nobility of France. In many ways Marcos must be considered a most eligible match. But there were drawbacks; the greatest of which, in Sir Ebenezer’s eyes, being that Marcos was what Sir Ebenezer termed to himself ‘a foreigner’ - by which he did not mean so much the young man’s French and Spanish ancestry, but his mode of life, which was foreign to the English point of view. Many men like Sir Ebenezer Barton lived and worked and often died in this country that the ‘Merchants of London trading to the East Indies’ had conquered. But they never thought of it as ‘Home’. To Marcos however, and to his father, mother and sister, India, and in particular the Kingdom of Oudh, was home. Marcos had returned to it from nine years spent in Spain and Europe, and it had been for him a home-coming. And his sister had married an Indian - a man of an alien faith.
    â€˜You desire my permission to ask my niece for her hand in marriage,’ said Sir Ebenezer heavily, ‘but have you not already asked her without that permission?’
    â€˜No,’ said Marcos, very white about the mouth. ‘I had not thought of it. I mean - I could not have done so without speaking first to you, but it seemed a thing that need not be said. I have known it from the first moment I saw her. I had meant to speak to you, but …’
    Marcos could not explain even to himself, much less to Sir Ebenezer, the remote and enchanted world in which he and Sabrina had seemed to move ever since that first moment of their meeting. Of
course
they would one day marry and live happily ever after - what a foolish question! And because Marcos was his father’s son, he would not say the formal and unnecessary words until he had duly asked the formal and necessary permission to speak them. Meanwhile it was enough for both of them to realize that they had found each other. It was from this dream-like state that Emily’s decision to remove instantly to Delhi had aroused them.
    Sir Ebenezer hedged, playing for time. He was in no position, he said, to grant or withhold permission for his niece’s marriage: that responsibility rested with her grandfather, Lord Ware. Marcos must wait until such time as the Earl’s views could be made known, which would be of necessity a matter of a few months.
    â€˜But Sabrina is twenty-one,’ said Marcos. ‘She is of age. I have requested this interview with you only because it is correct that I should do so. If it is true that you cannot grant or withhold consent, neither can Lord Ware. Only Sabrina can do that.’
    â€˜He can disinherit her,’ said Sir Ebenezer drily. ‘The bulk of his property that is not entailed is to come to Sabrina.’
    â€˜She will not need it,’ said Marcos. ‘You know that my father is rich and that I am his heir. Sir Ebenezer, I beg you to permit me to address her.’
    â€˜And if I refuse?’
    Marcos’s gay laugh rang out suddenly. ‘Then I ask her without it. I am sorry, but I cannot help myself. When you wished to espouse the Lady Emily, if permission to address her had been refused, what would you have done?’
    Sir Ebenezer cast a reminiscent eye over that long-ago summer in Hampshire when he had fallen in love with his Emily, and was betrayed into a smile.
    â€˜Never did ask for it, my boy. Asked her straight out. But then that was quite a different thing, you know. Emily wasn’t a chit from the schoolroom. She was of age.’
    â€˜So is Sabrina.’
    â€˜There is a vast difference between twenty-one and thirty-three!’ retorted Sir Ebenezer with an unconscious lack of