‘I expect that’s what gives Nat lumbago,’ said Maud. ‘Draughts –’

Valerie began to powder her nose before the mirror over the fireplace. Paula, who seemed to be restless, drifted about the room, smoking a cigarette, and nicking the ash on to the carpet.

Mathilda, taking a chair opposite to Maud, said: ‘I wish you wouldn’t prowl, Paula. And if you could refrain from badgering Nat about your young friend’s play I feel that this party might go with more of a swing.’

‘I don’t care about that. It’s vital to me to get Willoughby’s play put on!’

‘Love’s young dream?’ Mathilda cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

‘Mathilda! Can’t you understand that love doesn’t come into it? It’s art!’

‘Sorry!’ Mathilda apologised.

Maud, who had opened her book again, said: ‘Fancy! The Empress was only sixteen when Franz Josef fell in love with her! It was quite a romance.’

‘What Empress?’ demanded Paula, halting in the middle of the room, and staring at her.

‘The Empress of Austria, dear. Somehow one can’t imagine Franz Josef as a young man, can one? But it says here that he was very good-looking, and she fell in love with him at first sight. Of course, he ought to have married the elder sister, but he saw Elizabeth first, with her hair down her back, and that decided him.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with Willoughby’s play?’ asked Paula, in a stupefied voice.

‘Nothing, my dear; but I am reading a very interesting book about her.’

‘Well, it doesn’t interest me,’ said Paula, resuming her pacing of the room.

‘Never mind, Maud!’ said Mathilda. ‘Paula has a one-track mind, and no manners. Tell me more about your Empress!’

‘Poor thing!’ said Maud. ‘It was that mother-in-law, you know. She seems to have been a very unpleasant woman. The Archduchess, they called her, though I can’t quite make out why she was only an Archduchess when her son was an Emperor. She wanted him to marry Hélène.’

‘A little more, and I shall feel compelled to read this entrancing work,’ said Mathilda. ‘Who was Hélène?’

Maud was still explaining Hélène to Mathilda when the men came into the drawing-room.

It was plain that Nathaniel had not found the male company congenial. He had apparently been buttonholed by Roydon, for he cast several affronted glances at the playwright, and removed himself as far from his vicinity as he could. Mottisfont sat down beside Maud; and Stephen, who appeared to sympathise with his uncle, surprised everyone by engaging him in perfectly amiable conversation.

‘Stephen being the little gentleman quite takes my breath away,’ murmured Mathilda.

Joseph, standing near enough to overhear this remark, laid a conspiratorial finger across his lips. He saw that Nathaniel had observed this gesture, and made haste to say, in bracing accents: ‘Now, who says Rummy?’

No one said Rummy; several persons, notably Nathaniel, looked revolted; and after a pause, Joseph, a little crestfallen, said: ‘Well, well, what shall it be?’