As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.

A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.

Henry turned his hat in his hands but went on looking at Diana in a way that made her want to crawl into his arms and stay there forever.

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.

Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.