A novella from the 'Histories of Claybrooke'.The lives of Ann, a maidservant, and Frederick, the son of an earl, should be entirely separate. But there are always cross-currents at work beneath the politesse of eighteenth-century society which link the different parts of 'the big house' - from the village children to visiting royalty - and which mean that from childhood to old age, their lives are inevitably entwined.