There did not seem to be much hope of dragging Maud’s attention away from the Empress’s peculiarities, so, with a fond pat on her shoulder, Joseph bustled away again, to irritate the servants by begging them to put tea forward, and to trot upstairs to tap on Valerie’s door, and ask if she had everything she wanted.

Tea was served in the drawing-room. Maud laid aside the Life of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and poured out. She sat on the sofa, a dump of a woman behind a staggering array of embossed silver, and when each of the visitors came into the room, she extended her small plump hand with the same mechanical smile, and the same colourless phrase of welcome.

Mathilda sat beside her, and laughed when she saw the title of the book Maud had been reading. ‘Last time I was here it was the Memoirs of a Lady-in-Waiting,’ she said, teasing Maud.

Mockery slid off the armour of Maud’s self-sufficiency. ‘I like that kind of book,’ she replied simply.

When Nathaniel came in with Edgar Mottisfont, Stephen dragged himself out of a deep armchair, saying ungraciously: ‘Got your chair, uncle.’

Nathaniel accepted this overture in the spirit in which it was presumably meant. ‘Don’t disturb yourself, my boy. How have you been keeping?’

‘All right,’ Stephen said. He added, with a further effort towards civility: ‘You look very fit.’

‘Except for this wretched lumbago of mine,’ Nathaniel said, not quite pleased that Stephen should have forgotten his lumbago. ‘I had a touch of sciatica yesterday, too.’

‘Bad luck,’ said Stephen.

‘The ills the flesh is heir to!’ said Mottisfont, shaking his head. ‘Anno domini, Nat, anno domini!’

‘Nonsense!’ said Joseph. ‘Look at me! If you two old fogies would take my tip, and do your daily dozen every morning before breakfast, you’d feel twenty years younger! Knees bend – touch your toes – deep breathing before the open window!’

‘Don’t be a fool, Joe!’ growled Nathaniel. ‘Touch my toes indeed! Why, there are some mornings when I should be set fast if I stooped an inch!’

Miss Dean offered her contribution to the discussion. ‘I do think exercises are the most ghastly bore, don’t you?’

‘Shouldn’t be at your age,’ said Nathaniel.

‘A dose of salts every morning would do most people a great deal of good,’ said Maud, handing a cup-and-saucer to Stephen.

Nathaniel, after casting a malevolent look at his sister-in-law, at once began to talk to Mottisfont. Mathilda gave a gurgle of laughter, and said: ‘Well, that’s settled that topic, at any rate!’

Maud’s pale eyes met hers, uncomprehending, devoid of any hint of humour. ‘I find salts very beneficial,’ she said.

Valerie Dean, who was looking entrancingly pretty in a jersey-suit which exactly matched the blue of her eyes, had been taking stock of Mathilda’s tweed coat and skirt, and had reached the conclusion that it did not become her. This made her feel friendly towards Mathilda, and she moved her chair nearer to the sofa, and began to talk to her. Stephen, who seemed to be making a real effort to behave nicely, joined in his uncle’s conversation with Mottisfont, and Joseph, radiant now that his party looked like being a success after all, beamed on everyone impartially. So patent was his satisfaction that Mathilda’s eyes began to twinkle again, and she offered, after tea, to help him to hang up his paper-chains.