Miss Jubbles mounted the narrow stairs to the first-floor sitting-room. Mrs Jubbles was sitting before a small coal fire which smouldered in the grate. She was a tiny woman dressed entirely in black. Her black lace cap hung over her withered features. Her black gown was trimmed with jet and her black-lace-mittened hands clutched a teacup.

When Miss Jubbles entered, she said in a surprisingly robust voice, ‘Ring the bell for more tea, Dora.’

Miss Dora Jubbles pressed down the bell-push, and after a few minutes a small maid, breathless and with her cap askew, answered its summons. ‘More tea, Elsie,’ ordered Mrs Jubbles. ‘And straighten your cap, girl.’

Mother and daughter exchanged sympathetic smiles after the girl had left. ‘Servants,’ sighed Mrs Jubbles as if used to a household of them rather than the overworked Elsie and a cross gin-soaked woman who came in the mornings to do the ‘heavy work’.

‘How did it go?’ asked Mrs Jubbles eagerly.

Dora took off her coat and unpinned her large felt hat and stripped off her gloves. ‘Wait until Elsie brings the tea-things. I’ve ever so much to tell you.’

From her daughter’s tales, Mrs Jubbles had gathered that Captain Cathcart, younger son of a baron, who had chosen to sink to trade, was enamoured of her daughter. Both dreamt rosy dreams of being finally ensconced in some country mansion with a whole army of servants at their beck and call.

Elsie panted in with a tray with the tea-things and a plate containing two small Eccles cakes. Mother and daughter lived thriftily. Mrs Jubbles’s husband had owned a butcher’s shop in Camden Town and two houses other than the one the widow now lived in. She had sold all for a comfortable sum, but was keeping aside a substantial amount for her daughter’s wedding. The fact that Dora was now thirty-eight years old had not dimmed her hopes. She saw Dora as elegant and distinguished.

Dora told her mother all about Lady Rose, ending with, ‘She is very beautiful.’

Mrs Jubbles sniffed. ‘You should tell the newspapers what this Lady Rose has been up to. They’d pay you and she’d be so socially ruined that he couldn’t possibly want to marry her.’

Dora was shocked. ‘I would be betraying the captain’s trust. Oh, if you could have seen the way he smiled at me. There is an intimacy there, Mother, a warmth. And to confide in me the way he did? No, he seemed impatient with the adventures of this Lady Rose. He is never impatient with me.’

A little doubt crept into Mrs Jubbles mind. ‘This Lady Rose is young?’

‘Yes, very. Barely twenty, I would say.’

‘And the captain is . . .?’

‘Nearly thirty. Yes, he is younger than I am, but I think I am young-looking for my age.’