In whatever terms Mrs Dean might later censure her daughter’s mannerless interruption, even she was compelled to realise that after this forthright speech there could be no hope of renewing the engagement. She expressed a pious wish that they would not both discover that they had made a mistake they would regret, and left the room to overcome her chagrin in private.

Valerie said that for her part she was dead sure she wouldn’t regret it.

‘I shan’t either,’ said Stephen. ‘You’re a lovely, my pet, but you’d have driven me to suicide within a month.’

‘Well, I thought you were pretty stinking, if you want to know,’ said Valerie candidly. ‘I expect you’ll end up by marrying Mathilda.’

‘I feel that I owe it to you to tell you that you’re quite right.’

‘Good God, you haven’t gone and proposed to her already, have you?’

‘I have; but you needn’t spread it about yet.’

She stared at him ‘Gosh, so that’s why you’re suddenly looking almost human! Are you really feeling a hundred per cent, just because you’ve proposed to Mathilda Clare?’

‘No, my pretty nit-wit – because she accepted me.’

‘You are a sickening swine, Stephen!’ she said, without rancour. ‘You never looked in the least like that when you were engaged to me.’

‘I didn’t feel in the least like this. I now feel so brimful of human kindness that if it wasn’t Boxing Day I’m damned if I wouldn’t drive in to the Free Library, to see if I could find a copy of the Life of the Empress there for Aunt Maud.’

‘Well, you needn’t bother, because she’s writing to London for one,’ said Valerie.

In this she was not quite accurate. Maud had indeed set out to write such a letter, but as she unfortunately could not recall either the author or the publisher of the book, and the title pages had been consumed in the incinerator, an insuperable bar seemed to have arisen in the way of her obtaining the volume. She appealed to everyone to supply her with the necessary details, but as no one knew them, no one could come to her rescue. Joseph announced in tragic accents that the book would always conjure up such painful recollections that he hoped she would refrain from introducing it into the house again. Stephen at once astonished everyone by promising to scour London for all the books that might have been written about the Empress, and to send them down to her.

‘Now, now, old chap, I can’t have you teasing your aunt!’ said Joseph, shaking a finger at him.

‘You’re mistaken. I’m perfectly serious. You shall have innumerable lives of the Empress, aunt.’

‘It is very kind of you, Stephen, but I don’t want innumerable lives of her. I merely wish to replace the copy that was burnt. And I think that the person who wantonly destroyed it is the person who ought to replace it.’

‘I am not that person, but I am in a very sunny mood, and I will replace it,’ said Stephen.