‘I know I’m all wrong,’ she said quickly. ‘I know I’m not behaving a bit as one should when one is lucky enough to have a secretary but, you see, I’m not used to such luxuries, and I still like to pretend I’m doing everything myself. So I shall have all the fun of opening my letters and all the joy of handing them over to you. Which is very unfair, but you’ll have to put up with it, poor Miss Harris.’

She watched her secretary smile and replied with a charming look of understanding.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘we may as well get it done, mayn’t we?’

Miss Harris laid the letters in three neat heaps on the writing-pad and soon began to make shorthand notes of the answers she was to write for her employer. Lady Carrados kept up a sort of running commentary.

‘Lucy Lorrimer. Who is Lucy Lorrimer, Miss Harris? I know, she’s that old Lady Lorrimer who talks as if everybody was deaf. What does she want? “Hear you are bringing out your girl and would be so glad—” Well, we’ll have to see about that, won’t we? If it’s a free afternoon we’d be delighted. There you are. Now, this one. Oh, yes, Miss Harris, now this is most important. It’s from Lady Alleyn, who is a great friend of mine. Do you know who I mean? One of her sons is a deadly baronet and the other is a detective. Do you know?’

‘Is it Chief Inspector Alleyn, Lady Carrados? The famous one?’

‘That’s it. Terribly good-looking and remote. He was in the Foreign Office when the war broke out and then after the war he suddenly became a detective. I can’t tell you why. Not that it matters,’ continued Lady Carrados, glancing at the attentive face of her secretary, ‘because this letter is nothing to do with him. It’s about his brother George’s girl whom his mother is bringing out and I said I’d help. So you must remember, Miss Harris, that Sarah Alleyn is to be asked to everything. And Lady Alleyn to the mothers’ lunches and all those games. Have you got that? There’s her address. And remind me to write personally. Now away we go again and—’

She stopped so suddenly that Miss Harris glanced up in surprise. Lady Carrados was staring at a letter which she held in her long white fingers. The fingers trembled slightly. Miss Harris with a sort of fascination looked at them and at the square envelope. There was a silence in the white room—a silence broken only by the hurried inconsequent ticking of a little china clock on the mantelpiece. With a sharp click the envelope fell on the heap of letters.

‘Excuse me, Lady Carrados,’ said Miss Harris, ‘but are you feeling unwell?’

‘What? No. No, thank you.’