‘Why should you not have been invited to the party? Why? Why? Who are you to be spurned thus and derided by the lowest menials in Swelter’s kitchen?’

Steerpike paused and saw that his words had produced a great effect. Clarice had gone over to Cora’s chair where now they both sat bolt upright and very close together.

‘When you suggested so perspicaciously just now that the solution to this insufferable state of affairs lay in the destruction of your brother’s cumbersome library, I felt that you were right and that only through a brave action of that kind might you be able to lift up your heads once more and feel the slur removed from your escutcheon. That idea of yours spelt genius. I appeal to your Ladyships to do what you feel to be consistent with your honour and your pride. You are not old, your Ladyships, oh no, you are not old. But are you young? I should like to feel that what years you have left will be filled with glamorous days and romantic nights. Shall it be so? Shall we take the step towards justice? Yes or no, my dear ladies, yes or no.’

They got up together. ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we want Power back.’

‘We want our servants back and justice back and everything back,’ Cora said slowly, a counterpoint of intense excitement weaving through the flat foreground of her voice.

‘And romantic nights,’ said Clarice. ‘I’d like that. Yes, yes. Burn! Burn,’ she continued loudly, her flat bosom beginning to heave up and down like a machine. ‘Burn! burn! burn!’

‘When?’ said Cora. ‘When can we burn it up?’

Steerpike held up his hand to quieten them. But they took no notice, only leaning forward, holding each other’s hands and crying in their dreadful emotionless voices:

‘Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!’ until they had exhausted themselves.

Steerpike had not flinched under this ordeal. He now realized more completely than before why they were ostracized from the normal activities of the castle. He had known they were slow, but he had not known that they could behave like this.

He changed his tone.

‘Sit down!’ he rapped out. ‘Both of you. Sit down!’

They complied at once, and although they were taken aback at the peremptory nature of his order, he could see that he now had complete control over them, and though his inclination was to show his authority and to taste for the first time the sinister delights of his power, yet he spoke to them gently – for, first of all, the library must be burned for a reason of his own. After that, with such a dreadful hold over them, he could relax for a time and enjoy a delicious dictatorship in the South Wing.