She had known for some time that Westbourne Place was to be sold, and she and her mother would move to another home, but she had not understood that the chairs and the tables, the glass and china, the very plate off which they ate, would be theirs no longer. The callous indifference of these men towards her mother's possessions was, to the child, like a little stab of pain. The chairs had been placed back to back in a long row, and the pictures had been taken down from their hanging-rails and stacked in a pile on the floor.

Then another man came and laid out all the best glass and china on a side-table, and, when he had arranged them to his satisfaction, he carried them through to the drawing-room and put the table against the wall. The room held an air of odd surprise when the chairs had gone. Then he went away, and in a few minutes came back again with two workmen who wore aprons and had their shirt sleeves rolled above their elbows, and he told the men to take the chairs away. She had watched them for a time earlier in the day, and no one had noticed her she had been free to wander through the rooms and passages and see the severe-looking gentleman in the dark coat put numbered tickets on the dining-room chairs. She was in the servants' bedroom because the other rooms in the house were being stripped of their furniture, and strange men she had never seen before were strolling backwards and forwards through the two drawing-rooms pointing to the chairs and tables, feeling the legs of the little gilt boudoir couch with coarse dirty hands, running inquisitive fingers up the rich brocaded curtains. On a cold spring day in 1810 a little sallow-faced girl of twelve leant with her nose pressed against the windowpane of a tall house in Westbourne Place.

The du mauriers