‘You mean,’ said Valerie, slowly assimilating the gist of this, ‘that I can put the blame on to you?’

‘There’s no question of blame, my pet,’ said Mrs Dean, abandoning hope of dawning intelligence in her first-born. ‘Merely Mother doesn’t feel it right for you to be engaged to a man under a cloud.’

‘Oh, Mummy, how too Victorian! I don’t mind about that part of it! The point is I don’t really like Stephen, and I know he’d be a hellish husband.’

‘Now, you know Mother doesn’t like to hear that sort of talk!’ said Mrs Dean repressively. ‘Just give Mother your ring, and leave it to her to do what’s best!’

Valerie drew the ring somewhat regretfully from her finger, remarking with a sigh that she supposed she would have to return it to Stephen. ‘I rather loathe giving it back,’ she said. ‘If he says he’d like me to keep it, can I, Mummy?’

‘One of these days I hope my little girl will have many rings, just as fine as this one,’ said Mrs Dean, firmly removing the ring from Valerie’s grasp.

Upon this elevated note the conversation came to an end. Valerie returned to the all-absorbing task of reddening her lips, and Mrs Dean sallied forth in search of Stephen.

She was prepared to expend both tact and eloquence upon her delicate mission, but she found that neither was required. Stephen, looking almost benign, met her more than half-way. He wholeheartedly agreed that under the existing circumstances he had no right to expect a sensitive child to go on being engaged to him, cheerfully pocketed the ring, and acquiesced with maddening readiness in Mrs Dean’s hope that he and Valerie might remain good friends. In fact, he went further, announcing with a bland smile that he would be a brother to Valerie, a remark which convinced Mrs Dean that, fortune or no fortune, he would have made a deplorable son-in-law.

She was not the woman to give way to indignation when it would clearly serve her interests better to control her spleen, and as she was obliged to remain at Lexham until the police saw fit to give Valerie permission to go, she came down to tea with her invincible smile on her lips, and only a steely light in her eyes to betray her inner feelings.

The news of the broken engagement had by that time spread through the house, and was received by the several members of the party with varying degrees of interest and emotion. Mottisfont said that he did not blame the girl; Roydon, who, in spite of writing grimly realistic plays, was a romantic at heart, was inclined to deplore such disloyalty in one so lovely; Paula said indifferently that she had never expected the engagement to come to anything; Maud greeted the tidings with apathy; Mathilda warmly congratulated Stephen; and Joseph, rising as usual to the occasion, insisted on regarding his nephew as one whose brave spirit had been shattered by treachery. When he encountered Stephen, he went towards him, and clasped one of his hands before Stephen could frustrate him, and said in a voice deepened by emotion: ‘My boy, what can I say to you?’