It followed the after-luncheon rest and, in its early stages, was conducted in the strictest privacy. She lay on her bed. Florence, unspeaking and tight-mouthed, darkened the room and produced from the bathroom sundry bottles and pots. She removed the make-up from her mistress’s face, put wet pads over her eyes and began to apply a layer of greenish astringent paste. Miss Bellamy attempted to make conversation and was unsuccessful. At last she demanded impatiently: ‘What’s the matter with you? Gone upstage?’ Florence was silent. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Miss Bellamy ejaculated. ‘ You’re not holding out on me because of this morning, are you?’

Florence slapped a layer across Miss Bellamy’s upper lip. ‘That stuff’s stinging me,’ Miss Bellamy mumbled with difficulty. ‘You haven’t mixed it properly.’

Florence completed the mask. From behind it Miss Bellamy attempted to say: ‘All right, you can go to hell and sulk there,’ but remembering she was not supposed to speak, lay fuming. She heard Florence go out of the room. Ten minutes later she returned, stood for some time looking down on the greenish, blinded face and then set about removing the mask.

The toilet continued in icy silence, proceeding through its manifold and exacting routines. The face was scrutinized like a microscopic slide. The hair was drilled. The person was subjected to masterful but tactful discipline. That which, unsubjected, declared itself centrally, was forced to make a less aggressive reappearance above the seventh rib where it was trapped, confined and imperceptibly distributed. And throughout these intimate manipulations, Florence and Miss Bellamy maintained an absolute and inimical silence. Only when they had been effected did Miss Bellamy open her door to her court.

In the past, Pinky and Bertie had attended: the former vaguely in the role of confidante, the latter to advise about the final stages of the ritual. Today they had not presented themselves and Miss Bellamy was illogically resentful. Though her initial fury had subsided it lay like a sediment at the bottom of her thoughts and it wouldn’t take much, she realized, to stir it up.

Charles was the first to arrive and found her already dressed. She wore crimson chiffon, intricately folded and draped with loose panels that floated tactfully past her waist and hips. The décolletage plunged and at its lowest point contained orchids and diamonds. Diamonds appeared again at intervals in the form of brooches and clips, flashed in stalactites from her ears and encircled her neck and wrist in a stutter of brilliance: she was indeed magnificent.

‘Well?’ she said and faced her husband.

‘My dear!’ said Charles gently. ‘I’m overwhelmed.’

Something in his voice irritated her. ‘You don’t like it,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter with it?’

‘It’s quite superb. Dazzling.’