‘So you let them send you away?’ Lady Polly demanded of the quaking Humphrey.

‘I couldn’t do otherwise, my lady. It’s my nerves.’

‘You know, Humphrey, I am tired of those nerves of yours. Mrs Cummings was telling me that there is a very good nerve doctor.’ She rummaged in a capacious reticule and found a small notebook and flicked it open.

‘Here we are. Dr Thomas McWhirter. He’s in Harley Street. Get Jarvis to phone and make an appointment for you and then perhaps we’ll hear less about your nerves.’

Lady Polly felt quite noble. She believed in looking after her servants. She did not know that she was setting in train a course of events that would put Rose in danger.

The following afternoon, Rose and Daisy visited Angela Stockton. Rose was disappointed to find Mrs Stockton’s son, Peregrine, there as well. Fennel tea was served and some jaw-breaking biscuits.

‘I found your lecture very interesting,’ said Rose, averting her eyes from Peregrine, whose hot gaze was fastened on her face.

‘Oh, go on with you,’ laughed Peregrine. ‘Pretty creature like you. Got better to do with your time, hey?’

Angela put down her cup with an angry little click. ‘Peregrine, I wish to talk to these ladies alone.’

‘I’ll tootle off, then. Don’t know how you can drink that muck.’

Peregrine left the room and Rose heaved a sigh of relief. ‘You must forgive Perry,’ sighed Angela. ‘Such a naughty boy. So handsome, don’t you think?’

‘Mmm,’ murmured Rose, not wanting to encourage her. Then it suddenly dawned on her that if there was nothing about Angela that made her vulnerable to blackmail, there might be something about her son, and surely a rich and devoted mother would pay anything to suppress a scandal about him.

‘But you were asking about my lecture,’ Angela went on. ‘Mr Steiner is of peasant stock, which makes him more in touch with the earth, the soil, the birds and the bees. But the point of vegetarianism is that it cleanses the body and leaves us free to contact the spirit world. Animals have souls, too. Think of all those poor sheep, pigs and cows slaughtered to feed us.’

‘But if we all stopped eating meat,’ said Rose, ‘all those animals would have to be slaughtered, apart from a very few which would be kept in zoos. Samuel Butler said that if you carry that argument to its logical conclusion, then we would all end up eating nothing but cauliflowers which had been humanely put to death.’

Rose tried not to look at Daisy, who was surreptitiously pouring her tea into a potted plant.

‘And,’ Rose went on, ‘the perception of female beauty would need to change. One is really required to be plump to be considered a beauty.’

‘But you see, you are talking of things of the world,’ said Angela eagerly. ‘We, in my Vegetarian Society, eschew such frivolities.’