The corridor was gloomy and wreathed in amorphous shadows, and the pieces of ornate Victorian furniture that punctuated its long expanse were like nebulous phantoms in the cold murky light emanating from the gas fixtures on the walls. Emma had to traverse the entire length of the shadowy corridor to reach Olivia Wainright’s room and, since it was deserted, she ran all the way, although this was prompted not so much by nervousness or fear as by her pressing need to save time, as usual. She was panting when she tapped on the door.

‘Come in,’ Olivia called out in a light melodious voice. Emma opened the door and stood politely on the threshold, as always surveying the room with grudging approval. It was the only one that appealed to her at Fairley Hall, apart from the cheerful kitchen.

Olivia Wainright was sitting at the carved oak dressing table with her back to the door. She swivelled around quickly. ‘Yes, Emma, do you need me for something?’ she asked with her usual courtesy.

Emma had taken a step forward, smiling in return, but she suddenly stiffened and stopped short. Olivia’s face was unnaturally pale, denuded as it was of the French rouges and powders and the other cosmetics she normally favoured. This intense pallor gave her a wan and exhausted look, as did her very white lips. Her aquamarine eyes were glittering and appeared larger and bluer in the paleness of her delicate face, their almost supernatural colour emphasized even more by the sky-blue silk robe she wore. Her dark brown hair, usually beautifully groomed and upswept in a fashionable style, fell around her shoulders like a glossy velvet cowl in the refracted light from the dressing-table lamps.

Emma knew she was gaping at Olivia Wainright and that this was the height of rudeness. But she could not help herself, and she could not turn away, so stupefied was she. That pallor, the tumbling hair, those brilliant eyes, all merged to form a face that overflowed with gentleness and poignancy, a luminous, haunting face with which Emma was only too familiar.

Olivia, meanwhile, had immediately perceived Emma’s strong reaction. She was mystified and regarded the girl at first curiously, and then with mounting nervousness, the powder puff dangling in her hand.

‘Good gracious, Emma, whatever is it? Why, you look as if you have seen a ghost, child. Are you feeling ill?’ she cried in a voice unusually vehement for her.

Emma shook her head. Finally she spoke. ‘No, no, Mrs Wainright. Nowt’s wrong. Please don’t fret yerself, ma’am. Excuse me, if I looked a bit funny like-’ Emma paused, uncertain of how to correctly explain her behaviour, which she knew must have seemed queer and was also improper. She coughed behind her hand. ‘I felt a bit faint for a second,’ she lied, and continued more truthfully and in a stronger voice, ‘I ran ever so fast down the corridor. Yes, that was it.’

Olivia relaxed, but she continued to frown. ‘You are always running, Emma. One of these days you will have an accident. But never mind that now. Are you sure you are perfectly all right? You are very white indeed. Perhaps you should lie down until the guests arrive,’ Olivia suggested with obvious concern.

‘Thank yer, ever so much, ma’am. But I’m better. Honest. I was just puffed. And I can’t rest now, Mrs Wainright. I’ve got ter finish getting Mrs Fairley ready. That’s why I came. Ter borrow some hairpins, if yer can spare a few,’ Emma explained in a rush of words to camouflage her considerable embarrassment.

‘Of course. You may have these,’ Olivia said, gathering up a handful.

Emma took them from her and attempted a smile. ‘Thank yer, Mrs Wainright.’

Olivia’s perceptive eyes contemplated Emma thoughtfully. She was not at all certain she believed the girl’s explanation. However, since she could not imagine any other logical reason for her ashen face and her apparent distress, she had no alternative but to accept it.

‘You do look a little peaked to me, Emma,’ she said slowly. ‘After the guests have arrived, and when you have attended to the ladies’ wraps, I want you to rest in the kitchen until it is time to serve dinner at eight-thirty. I don’t want you collapsing from fatigue. Inform Murgatroyd that is my wish.’

‘Yes, ma’am. That’s kind of yer,’ said Emma. She felt guilty and ashamed for pretending to feel faint, and also for having lied to Mrs Wainright.

Olivia reached out and patted Emma’s shoulder. She shook her head in fond exasperation. ‘Sometimes I think you are much too diligent for your own good, Emma. You know I am more than satisfied with your work. Try and take things at a slower pace, child,’ she said with the utmost kindness.

Emma, staring up at her fixedly, felt her throat tighten with emotion and tears stung her eyes. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She bobbed a curtsy and left the room as sedately as she could. Once she was safely in the corridor, Emma exhaled deeply and with enormous relief. She leaned against a small carved table to steady herself. Her legs felt wobbly and her heart was hammering. She looked back at the door, shaking her head from side to side in total disbelief. Olivia Wainright looked like her own mother. As incredible as that seemed, Emma had just seen it with her own eyes. She’s the spitting image of me mam, she whispered to herself with awe, and still disbelieving.

Emma then wondered why she had never noticed this likeness before. Instantly she understood. It was very simple really. In all of the time Olivia had been staying at Fairley Hall, Emma had never seen her so intimately revealed, undressed and ungroomed in the privacy of her room, until a few moments ago. Sitting at the dressing table in the diffused light, so informally attired, her face naked of cosmetics, she looked a different woman from the one Emma was accustomed to seeing moving around the house so elegantly and with cool authority. In her naturalness Olivia was still stunningly lovely, but without the stylish clothes, the elaborate hairdos, and the other artifices of fashion, she appeared ingenuous and vulnerable, and there was a sweet simplicity about her that was girlish and even innocent.

And Emma was not mistaken. Olivia Wainright, stripped of the outer trappings of the chic society woman, did resemble Elizabeth Harte. In fact, the resemblance was so extraordinary as to be uncanny. They might have been created from the same mould, except that Elizabeth’s beauty was now only a faint echo of Olivia’s. Worn out as she was by the struggle to survive, riddled with consumption, undernourished, and in constant pain, her fine looks had blurred and slowly begun to fade. Yet Emma had seen in Olivia her mother’s beauty as it had once been, and this had not only startled her but moved her as well. Emma was not the only one to have noticed the strong likeness between these two women from such different worlds. Another occupant of Fairley Hall had also detected it and, like Emma, had been rocked to the core at this discovery.

But Emma was unaware of this as she stood staring at Olivia Wainright’s door, still shaking her head. She regained some of her composure and for once in her life she did not run. She walked down the corridor, and slowly, benumbed by this odd coincidence. As she made her way back to Adele’s bedroom, it did not occur to Emma that perhaps she had unconsciously recognized the similarity earlier, and that this might partially explain her secret adoration of Olivia. Only years later did this thought strike her, and quite forcibly so.

In Emma’s absence, Adele had attended to her face. For once she had decided it was necessary to resort to her jars of French cosmetics. She had applied a little rouge, just enough to highlight her cheekbones and dispel the paleness of her skin, and had also touched her lips with it. She was lightly powdering her nose when Emma entered.

‘Here I am then, Mrs Fairley,’ said Emma in a low voice hurrying to the dressing table, and the waiting Adele.