‘What are you thinking?’ Catalina asked, looking curiously into her face.

‘I-nothing. Why do you ask?’

‘Suddenly your face has a strange expression, as though you could see something very far away that nobody else could see. Oh, no!’ Her hand flew to her mouth in a conscience-stricken gesture. ‘I have made you think about your own husband, and that makes you sad because he is dead. Forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ Maggie said hastily. ‘It’s four years since he died. I don’t brood about it now.’

‘But you do. You never talk about him, so you must be brooding in secret,’ Catalina said with youthful romanticism. ‘Oh, Maggie, how lucky you are to have known a great love. I shall die without ever knowing a great love.’

That was the thing about Catalina. One moment she could discuss her predicament with a clear-sightedness that made Maggie respect her, and the next she would go off in a childish flight of melodramatic fancy.

‘I wish you would tell me about Señor Cortez,’ she begged.

‘Start eating,’ Maggie advised quietly.

The last thing she wanted to discuss was her husband, whose name had been Roderigo Alva. After his death she had reverted to her maiden name of Cortez, determined to cut all connection with the past. Normally she kept her secrets, but in an unguarded moment she’d let slip that she’d once had a Spanish husband, and Catalina had naturally assumed that Cortez was her married name. Rather than correct her, and prompt more unwanted questions, Maggie had let it pass.

To divert the girl’s attention, Maggie said, ‘I’m sure Don Sebastian will see that he can’t hold you to a promise given when you were sixteen. If you just explain-’

‘Explain? Hah! This isn’t a reasonable Englishman, Maggie. He only listens to what he wants to hear and insists on his own way-’

‘In short, he’s a Spaniard. And I’m beginning to think any woman who marries a Spaniard is crazy,’ Maggie said with more feeling than she’d meant to reveal.