Julia gave a little sigh of surprise and touched my hand. We had seen him nine months ago at Monte Carlo, when he had been an upright and stately figure, little changed from when I first met him in Venice. Now he was an old man. Plender had told us his master had been unwell lately: he had not prepared us for this.

Lord Marchmain stood bowed and shrunken, weighed down by his great-coat, a white muffler fluttering untidily at his throat, a cloth cap pulled low on his forehead, his face white and lined, his nose coloured by the cold; the tears which gathered in his eyes came not from emotion but from the east wind; he breathed heavily. Cara tucked in the end of his muffler and whispered something to him. He raised a gloved hand – a schoolboy’s glove of grey wool – and made a small, weary gesture of greeting to the group at the door; then, very slowly, with his eyes on the ground before him, he made his way into the house.

They took off his coat and cap and muffler and the kind of leather jerkin which he wore under them; thus stripped he seemed more than ever wasted but more elegant; he had cast the shabbiness of extreme fatigue. Cara straightened his tie; he wiped his eyes with a bandanna handkerchief and shuffled with his stick to the hall fire.

There was a little heraldic chair by the chimney-piece, one of a set which stood against the walls, a little, inhospitable, flat-seated thing, a mere excuse for the elaborate armorial painting on its back, on which, perhaps, no one, not even a weary footman, had ever sat since it was made; there Lord Marchmain sat and wiped his eyes.

‘It’s the cold,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten how cold it is in England. Quite bowled me over.’

‘Can I get you anything, my lord?’

‘Nothing, thank you. Cara, where are those confounded pills?’

‘Alex, the doctor said not more than three times a day.’

‘Damn the doctor. I feel quite bowled over.’

Cara produced a blue bottle from her bag and Lord Marchmain took a pill. Whatever was in it, seemed to revive him. He remained seated, his long legs stuck out before him, his cane between them, his chin on its ivory handle, but he began to take notice of us all, to greet us and to give orders.

‘I’m afraid I’m not at all the thing today; the journey’s taken it out of me. Ought to have waited a night at Dover. Wilcox, what rooms have you prepared for me?’

‘Your old ones, my Lord.’

‘Won’t do; not till I’m fit again. Too many stairs; must be on the ground floor. Plender, get a bed made up for me downstairs.’

Plender and Wilcox exchanged an anxious glance.

‘Very good, my Lord. Which room shall we put it in?’

Lord Marchmain thought for a moment. ‘The Chinese drawing-room; and, Wilcox, the “Queen’s bed”.’