Troy heard this with dismay.

‘What else?’ Miss Orrincourt persisted babyishly but with an extremely unenthusiastic glance at Troy.

‘We’ll see,’ said Sir Henry uneasily.

‘But Noddy—’

‘Mrs Alleyn,’ said Millamant from the foot of the table, ‘shall we—?’

And she marshalled her ladies out of the dining-room.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Sir Henry led Troy through the pages of three albums of theatrical photographs. This she rather enjoyed. It was strange, she thought, to see how the fashion in Elizabethan garments changed in the world of theatre. Here was a young Victorian Henry Ancred very much be-pointed, be-ruffed, encased and furbished, in a perfect welter of velvet, ribbon and leather; here a modern elderly Henry Ancred in a stylized and simplified costume that had apparently been made of painted scenic canvas. Yet both were the Duke of Buckingham.

Miss Orrincourt joined a little fretfully in this pastime. Perched on the arm of Sir Henry’s chair and disseminating an aura of black market scent, she giggled tactlessly over the earlier photographs and yawned over the later ones. ‘My dear,’ she ejaculated, ‘look at you! You’ve got everything on but the kitchen sink!’ This was in reference to a picture of Sir Henry as Richard II. Cedric tittered and immediately looked frightened. Pauline said: ‘I must say, Papa, I don’t think anyone else has ever approached your flair for exactly the right costume.’

‘My dear,’ her father rejoined, ‘it’s the way you wear ’em.’ He patted Miss Orrincourt’s hand. ‘You do very well, my child,’ he said, ‘in your easy modem dresses. How would you manage if, like Ellen Terry, you had two feet of heavy velvet in front of you on the stage and were asked to move like a queen down a flight of stairs? You’d fall on your nice little nose.’

He was obviously a vain man. It was extraordinary, Troy thought, that he remained unmoved by Miss Orrincourt’s lack of reverence, and remembering Thomas’s remark about David and Abishag the Shunammite, Troy was forced to the disagreeable conclusion that Sir Henry was in his dotage about Miss Orrincourt.

At ten o’clock a grog-tray was brought in. Sir Henry drank barley water, suffered the women of his family to kiss him goodnight, nodded to Paul and Cedric, and, to her intense embarrassment, kissed Troy’s hand. ‘À demain,’ he said in his deepest voice. ‘We meet at eleven. I am fortunate.’

He made a magnificent exit, and ten minutes later, Miss Orrincourt, yawning extensively, also retired.

Her disappearance was the signal for an outbreak among the Ancreds.

‘Honestly, Milly! Honestly, Aunt Pauline. Can we believe our eyes!’ cried Cedric. ‘The Sunburst! I mean actually!’

‘Well, Millamant,’ said Pauline, ‘I now see for myself how things stand at Ancreton.’

‘You wouldn’t believe me when I told you, Pauline,’ Millamant rejoined. ‘You’ve been here a month, but you wouldn’t—’