Dr Nolan and Alice had continued in this vein through the removing of the plates from one course and the serving of the next, so that both quite forgot to turn to their other side, occasioning a series of rebuking coughs from Aunt Felicity. It was with some reluctance that Alice desisted then and turned to lighter talk with the deaf old man on her left. To talk prettily, to wait out a point and not interject, even when an interlocutor touched on subjects close to her own interests and reading; to keep her voice low and to laugh – but quietly! – when a man was not in the slightest amusing to her: these were the sorest social trials to Alice. Since her husband had been away at war, she often found herself obliged to listen to men’s opinions about the Russian campaign. It was not the exception but the general rule that they knew less of it than she herself; yet decorum had it that she should not say so. It seemed burdensome to her that such frippish discourse was what was expected of her sex, when she had so many much more interesting things to say. But when she remarked this to her aunt after the guests had left, that lady replied that Alice was fortunate to find herself still young and handsome enough for a fellow to expect a response at all.

‘You will find, in time, that nothing more than passing the salt is expected of you at supper. After you attain the age of forty or forty-five years, they simply talk at you, as if you were a wall. You are moved lower and lower down the table, until you find yourself in a huddle with a retiring cleric, an impecunious elderly cousin and a deaf aunt. Supposed gentlemen show more consideration to a horse than they ever do to a woman of any vintage. When you are my age you will look back on all the young men who tried to flirt with you with something like affection, I assure you, however foolish they appear to you now.’

‘But I don’t want to flirt, Aunt! I want to talk,’ said Alice.

At this her aunt only smiled.

3.