‘I can only say I’ve seen him drunk often and I’ve been drunk with him often, but last night was quite new to me.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean with Sebastian. I mean years ago. I’ve been through it all before with someone else whom I loved. Well, you must know what I mean – with his father. He used to be drunk in just that way. Someone told me he is not like that now. I pray God it’s true and thank God for it with all my heart, if it is. But the running away – he ran away, too, you know. It was as you said just now, he was ashamed of being unhappy. Both of them unhappy, ashamed, and running away. It’s too pitiful. The men I grew up with’ – and her great eyes moved from the embroidery to the three miniatures in the folding leather case on the chimney-piece – ‘were not like that. I simply don’t understand it. Do you, Charles?’

‘Only very little.’

‘And yet Sebastian is fonder of you than of any of us, you know. You’ve got to help him. I can’t.’

I have here compressed into a few sentences what, there, required many. Lady Marchmain was not diffuse, but she took hold of her subject in a feminine, flirtatious way, circling, approaching, retreating, feinting; she hovered over it like a butterfly; she played ‘grandmother’s steps’ with it, getting nearer the real point imperceptibly while one’s back was turned, standing rooted when she was observed. The unhappiness, the running away – these made up her sorrow, and in her own way she exposed the whole of it, before she was done. It was an hour before she had said all she meant to say. Then, as I rose to leave her, she added as though in an afterthought: ‘I wonder have you seen my brothers’ book? It has just come out.’

I told her I had looked through it in Sebastian’s rooms.

‘I should like you to have a copy. May I give you one? They were three splendid men; Ned was the best of them. He was the last to be killed, and when the telegram came, as I knew it would come, I thought: “Now it’s my son’s turn to do what Ned can never do now.” I was alone then. He was just going to Eton. If you read Ned’s book you’ll understand.’

She had a copy lying ready on her bureau. I thought at the time, ‘She planned this parting before ever I came in. Had she rehearsed all the interview? If things had gone differently would she have put the book back in the drawer?’

She wrote her name and mine on the fly leaf, the date and place.

‘I prayed for you, too, in the night,’ she said.

I closed the door behind me, shutting out the bondieuserie, the low ceiling, the chintz, the lambskin bindings, the views of Florence, the bowls of hyacinth and potpourri, the petit-point, the intimate feminine, modern world, and was back under the coved and coffered roof, the columns and entablature of the central hall, in the august, masculine atmosphere of a better age.