‘Well, Stephen!’ said Edgar Mottisfont, descending from the car which had been sent to fetch him from the station.

‘Hallo!’ said Stephen indifferently.

‘This is an unexpected pleasure,’ said Mottisfont, looking at him with disfavour.

‘Why?’ asked Stephen.

‘Now, now, now!’ chided Joseph, overhearing this interchange, and bustling forward. ‘My dear Edgar! Come in, come in! You must be frozen, all of you! Look at the sky! We’re going to have a white Christmas. I shouldn’t be surprised if we found ourselves tobogganing in a day or two.’

‘I should,’ said Stephen, following the others into the house. ‘Hallo, Mathilda!’

‘I thought I heard your mellow accents,’ said Mathilda. ‘Spreading goodwill, my sweet?’

Stephen allowed his bitter mouth to relax into a smile at this greeting, but as Nathaniel came into the hall at that moment, and favoured him with nothing more than a nod, and a curt ‘Glad to see you, Stephen,’ the disagreeable expression returned to his face, and he immediately laid himself out to be objectionable to everyone within range.

Nathaniel, having shaken hands in a perfunctory fashion with Miss Dean, and said ‘Oh!’ dampingly to her announcement that she simply loved coming to spend Christmas in his perfectly fascinating house, lost no time in whisking himself and Edgar Mottisfont into his study.

‘Remind me some time to give you some hints and tips on how to put yourself over with your Uncle Nat,’ Mathilda said kindly to Miss Dean.

‘Blast you, shut up!’ snapped Stephen. ‘God, I wonder why I came?’

‘Probably because you couldn’t think of anywhere else to go,’ said Mathilda. Catching sight of Joseph’s absurdly dismayed countenance, she added: ‘Anyway, now you are here, behave yourself! Would you like to go up to your room now, Valerie, or have tea first?’

Miss Dean, whose major preoccupation in life was the possibility of her hair becoming disarranged, or her complexion impaired, chose to go to her room. This put Joseph in mind of his wife, but by the time he had run her to earth in the drawing-room, Mathilda had escorted Valerie upstairs.

Maud, gently chided by Joseph for not having come out to welcome the visitors, said that she had not heard their arrival. ‘I have a very interesting book here,’ she said. ‘I got it out of the library today. It is the one you or Nat had out a little while ago, and which you thought I should not care for, about the poor Empress of Austria. Fancy, Joseph! She actually rode in a circus!’

Joseph, who possibly had a very fair idea of what the company would have to suffer from his wife’s perusal of this, or any other, book, suggested tactfully that it should be put away until after Christmas, and reminded her that she was Valerie’s hostess, and should have showed her the way to her room.

‘No, dear,’ replied Maud. ‘I’m sure I had nothing to do with inviting Valerie here. Nor do I see why I shouldn’t read my book at Christmas as well as at any other time. She could sit on her hair. Fancy!’