‘What do you think of him?’

‘I don’t know. He’s got a lot of charm, but I wish he’d settle down.’

‘Is it botherin’ you much?’

‘That?’ She caught her breath. ‘A little, naturally. Oh, there’s Lady Alleyn! We’re supposed to be together.’

‘Delightful woman, ain’t she? I’m waiting for Mrs Halcut-Hackett.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought her quite your cup of tea,’ said Lady Carrados vaguely.

Lord Robert made his rabbit-face and winked.

‘We go into mutual raptures over Bach,’ he said.

‘I must join Lady Alleyn. Good-bye, Bunchy.’

‘Good-bye, Evelyn. Don’t worry too much—over anything.’

She gave him a startled look and went away. Lord Robert sat down again. The room was nearly full and in ten minutes the Sirmione Quartette would appear on the modern dais.

‘Is she waiting for the lights to go down?’ wondered Lord Robert. He saw Agatha Troy come in, tried to catch her eye, and failed. People were beginning to settle down in the rows of gilt chairs and in the odd armchairs and sofas round the walls. Lord Robert looked restlessly towards the door and saw Sir Daniel Davidson. Davidson made straight for him. Sir Daniel had once cured Lord Robert’s sister of indigestion and Mildred, who was an emotional woman, had asked him to dinner. Lord Robert had been amused and interested by Davidson. His technique as a fashionable doctor was superb. ‘If Disraeli had taken to medicine instead of primroses,’ Lord Robert had said, ‘he would have been just such another.’ And he had encouraged Davidson to launch out on his favourite subject, The Arts, with rather emphatic capitals. He had capped Davidson’s Latin tags, quoted Congreve against him, and listened with amusement to a preposterous parallel drawn between Rubens and Dürer. ‘The extrovert and the introvert of Art,’ Davidson had cried, waving his beautiful hands, and Lord Robert had twinkled and said: ‘You are talking above my head.’ ‘I’m talking nonsense,’ Davidson had replied abruptly, ‘and you know it.’ But in a minute or two he had been off again as flamboyantly as ever and had left at one o’clock in the morning, very pleased with himself and overflowing with phrases.

‘Ah!’ he said now as he shook hands. ‘I might have guessed I should find you here. Doing the fashionable thing for the unfashionable reason. Music! My God!’

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Lord Robert.

‘My dear Lord Robert, how many of these people will know what they are listening to, or even listen? Not one in fifty.’

‘Oh, come now!’

‘Not one in fifty! There goes that fellow Withers whose aesthetic appreciation is less than that of a monkey on a barrel-organ. What’s he here for? I repeat, not one in fifty of these humbugs knows what he’s listening to. And how many of the forty-nine have the courage to confess themselves honest philistines?’

‘Quite a number, I should have thought,’ said Lord Robert cheerfully. ‘Myself for one. I’m inclined to go to sleep.’

‘Now, why say that? You know perfectly well—What’s the matter?’