Alice’s legal guardian was no longer powerless, despite the girl’s age and the fact she was not now far from the ‘age of majority’.
Much of that ‘self-reliance’ and ‘independence of spirit’ the girl had always been known for had now largely evaporated in the face of her new-found reliance on her physician’s script. Indeed, Alice’s growing dependence on the good doctor had now placed her well and truly under that woman’s control - and by proxy, her own.
But it was time the girl was more properly tamed. It was high time she got her stepdaughter more fully ‘domesticated’, as her physician accomplice, the ever-resourceful psychologist, Dr Anne Ecclestone, liked to put it.
In short; it was high time some ‘structure’ was introduced into the carefree life of the young heiress, Alice Lamberton. If she could expect a struggle where the imposition of strict discipline was concerned, she expected a veritable storm once the thorny question of corporal punishment raised its head...
...but that was where the doctor came in...
