Abel was making the trip to Europe for three reasons : first to confirm building contracts for new Baron hotels in London, Paris and possibly Rome; second, to give Florentyna her first view of Europe before she went to Radcliffe to study modem languages; and third, and most important to him, to revisit his castle in Poland to see if there was even an outside chance of proving his ownership.

London turned out to be a success for both of them.

Abel's advisors had found a site on Hyde Park comer, and he instructed solicitors to proceed immediately with all the negotiations for the land and the permits that would be needed before England's capital could boast a Baron. Florentyna found the austerity of post - war London forbidding after the excess of her own home, but the Londoners seemed to be undaunted by their war' - damaged city, still believing themselves to be a world power. She was invited to lunches, dinners and balls, and her father was proved right about her taste in clothes and the reaction of young European men. She returned each night with sparkling eyes and stories of new conquests made - and forgotten by the following morning. She couldn't make up her mind whether she wanted to marry an Etonian from the Grenadier Guards who saluted her all the time or a member of the House of Lords who was in waiting to the King. She wasn't quite sure what 'in waiting' meant, but he certainly knew exactly how to treat a lady.

In Paris, the pace never slackened and because they both spoke good French, they both managed as well with the Parisians as they had with the English. Abel was non - nally bored by the end of the second week of any holiday, and would start counting the days until he could return home to work. But not while he had Florentyna as his companion. She had, since his separation from Zaphia, become the centre of his life and the sole heir to his fortune.

When the time came for Abel to leave Paris, neither of them wanted to go, so they stayed on a few more days claiming as an excuse that Abel was still negotiating to buy a famous but now run - down hotel on the Boulevard Raspail. He did not inform the owner, a Monsieur Neuffe, who looked, if it were possible, even more run - down than the hotel, that he planned to demolish the building and start again from scratch. When Monsieur Neuffe signed the papers a few days later, Abel ordered the building razed to the ground while he and Florentyna, with no more excuses left for remaining in Paris, departed reluctantly for Rome.

After the friendliness of the British and the gaiety of the French capital, the sullen and dilapidated Eternal City immediately dampened their spirits, for the Romans felt they had nothing behind them.

In London, they had strolled through the magnificent Royal parks together, admired historic buildings, and Florentyna had danced until the small hours. In Paris, they had been to the Oper - A, lunched on the banks of the Seine, and taken a boat down the river past Notre Dame and on to supper in the Latin Quarter. In Rome, Abel found only an overpowering sense of financial instability and decided that he would have to shelve his plans to build a Baron in the Italian capital. Florentyna sensed her father's anxiety to once again see his castle in Poland, so she suggested they leave Italy a day early.

Abel had found bureaucracy more reluctant to grant a visa for Florentyna and himself to enter an Iron Curtain country than it had been to issue a permit to build a new five - hundred - room hotel in London. A less persistent visitor would probably have given up, but with the appropriate visas firmly stamped in their passports, Abel and Florentyna set off in a hired car for Slonim. The two travellers were kept waiting for hours at the Polish border, helped along only by the fact that Abel was fluent in the language. Had the border guards known why his Polish was so good, they would doubtless have taken an entirely different attitude to allowing him to return. Abel changed five hundred dollars into zlotys - that at least seemed to please the Poles - and motored on. The nearer they came to Slonim, the more Florentyna was aware of how much the journey meant to her father.

'Daddy, I can never remember you being so excited about anything!

'This is where I was born,' Abel explained. 'After such a long time in America, where things change every day, ies almost unreal to be back where it looks as if nothing has changed since I left.'

They drove on towards Slonim, Abel's senses heightened in anticipation, while horrified and angry at the devastadon of the once trim countryside and small, neat cottages.

Across a time span of nearly forty years he heard his childish voice ask the Baron whether the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe had arrived and would he be able to play his part, and tears came to his eyes to think how short that hour had been, and what a little part he had played.