Sophia was feeling uncomfortable because, though she loyally tried to suppress the thought, she was conscious that of the three Harry was the least likely to make a prudent use of a possible three thousand pounds.

Celia opened the door to them.

She was a little, fair person with a face of angelic and noble beauty, which filled painters and sculptors with an immediate desire to translate the planes of her cheeks, her benevolent brow, full throat and long eyelids into their own medium. She was Sophia’s closest friend. They were united by indolence, delight in beauty, a strong and rather ironical sense of humour, and a fundamental seriousness of temperament, but Sophia was bossier and more severe in her judgments than Celia. Also, Celia was quite alarmingly attractive to young men, in whom she took a tender and maternal interest, while Sophia tended to drive them away with snortings and an ironical manner.

Celia was the youngest of three Irish sisters, with whom the young Gardens used to play on the Heath when they were all small. The two elder had married and gone to live abroad, and Celia lived on alone in the little house which belonged to her widowed mother. Mrs Carmody liked to pay long visits to the sisters and their families, and Celia, who was nineteen, seemed to be perfectly happy taking a vague course at the School of Economics, comforting young men, and living on Lyons’ cakes and fillet steak, so her mother did not have a conscience about her.

Celia was as Irish as she could be, in the dreamy, sweetly sleepy, time-ignoring Irish way, not the brilliant, firework way, and her odd life suited her very well. She always behaved as though she had a hundred years to live and would be young until the very end of them, so why should she hurry or complain? This was restful to Sophia, who detested bustle, though she was often compelled by Fate to be a bustler herself. She deplored the fact that the keynote of Celia’s nature was the desire to love and to give, but recognized that this was so, and that nothing could alter it.

Sophia and Celia kissed one another, and Harry, with a matchless air of ease, also kissed Celia. It was the first time he had, but no one would have thought so, judging by the easy way his lips found her cheek. She raised her eyebrows a little and smiled, but said nothing; after all, she had known him since he was four.

‘Hullo, Celia,’ said Francis, with reserve and they all went through to the drawing room, which looked out at a little winding garden, opening on to the Heath.

There was a fire here, and a large comfortable old sofa pulled up to it, and the curtains were drawn. A crumpled copy of that well-informed but dreary and alarming journal The New Onlooker was on the sofa, with Celia’s huge horn-rimmed glasses. Harry nearly plumped himself down on them; they were just rescued in time by Francis.