Octavius had found a friend. This was Miss Bellamy’s physician, Dr Harkness, a contemporary of Octavius’s Oxford days and up at the House with him. They could be left together, happily reminiscent, and Anelida could be given her dry Martini and introduced to Pinky and Bertie, who were tending to hunt together through the party.

Bertie said rapidly: ‘I do congratulate you. Do swear to me on your sacred word of honour, never to wear anything but white and always, but always with your clever hat. Ever!’

‘You mustn’t take against Bertie,’ Pinky said kindly. ‘It’s really a smashing compliment, coming from him.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Anelida said. It struck her that they were both behaving rather oddly. They kept looking over her shoulder as if somebody or something behind her exerted a strange attraction over them. They did this so often that she felt impelled to follow their gaze and did so. It was Mary Bellamy at whom they had been darting their glances. She had moved farther into the room and stood quite close, surrounded by a noisy group of friends. She herself was talking. But to Anelida’s embarrassment she found Miss Bellamy’s eyes looked straight into her own, coldly and searchingly. It was not, she was sure, a casual or accidental affair. Miss Bellamy had been watching her and the effect was disconcerting. Anelida turned away only to meet another pair of eyes, Timon Gantry’s. And beside him yet another pair, Montague Marchant’s, speculative, observant. It was like an inversion of her ridiculous daydream and she found it disturbing. ‘The cynosure of all eyes indeed! With a difference,’ thought Anelida.

But Richard was beside her: not looking at her, his arm scarcely touching hers but there, to her great content. Pinky and Bertie talked with peculiar energy, making a friendly fuss over Anelida but conveying, nevertheless, a singular effect of nervous tension.

Presently Richard said: ‘Here’s somebody else who would like to meet you, Anelida.’ She looked up at a brick-coloured Guardee face and a pair of surprised blue eyes. ‘Colonel Warrender,’ Richard said.

After his bumpy fashion, Warrender made conversation. ‘Everybody always shouts at these things, isn’t it? Haven’t got up to pitch yet but will, of course. You’re on the stage, isn’t it?’

‘Just.’

‘Jolly good! What d’you think of Dicky’s plays?’

Anelida wasn’t yet accustomed to hearing Richard called Dicky or to being asked that sort of question in that sort of way.

She said: ‘Well – immensely successful, of course.’

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Successful! Awfully successful! ’Course. And I like ’em, you know. I’m his typical audience: want something gay and ’musing, with a good part for Mary. Not up to intellectual drama. Point is, though: is he satisfied? What d’you think? Wasting himself or not? What?’