“I believe he wanders down occasionally to obscure services. I never see him at the fashionable time. Of course, if he were a newcomer and displayed this shocking laxity no one would call. As it is, ‘Ramsays’ are an institution, and known to be queer. ‘Just a little eccentric, my dear, but such a brilliant young man.’ You know the style. Oh, here comes Nana!” She jumped up, and walked to meet her. “How do you do, Nana? I introduced myself to Elizabeth—by the way, can I call you that, Elizabeth?”

“Please do,” Elizabeth said, feeling that she, as the married woman, should have had the initiative here.

“Well, Miss Nina!” Nana said. “And does Mr. Stephen know you’re here?”

“No, and Elizabeth won’t let me shriek to him,” Nina said gaily. “I believe she spoils him, Nana.”

Nana gave her tight-lipped smile, and looked at Elizabeth.

“Will you have tea here, madam, or indoors?”

“Which would you like?” Elizabeth asked her guest.

“Here, please; it’s more exciting. Earwigs never drop into one’s tea indoors. Oh, there is Stephen!”

Steph came sauntering out of the library window, which was flung open to let the warm, rose-scented air into his room. He was looking very untidy, Elizabeth thought, in old grey flannels and a tweed coat. When he saw Nina he shouted, Hullo and hurried towards her.

“I say, old girl, this is topping of you! Have you been here long? Why did no one tell me? How are you, kid?”

Elizabeth was considerably taken aback to see him implant a brotherly kiss on Nina’s cheek, and give her shoulders a quick hug.

“Jolly quiet, weren’t you?” he remarked. He smiled down at Elizabeth. “She generally heralds her arrival with loud cries.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to be disturbed,” Elizabeth explained.

Nina sat down again and opened her sunshade.

“I was severely checked. I think you’re very lucky to have such a nice wife, Stephen.”

“I am,” he said. “You’re not in the sun, Nina, so why the outspread umbrella?”

“’Tisn’t an umbrella,” she protested. “If you weren’t so abominably dense, you’d grasp the fact that it’s a new sunshade, and I’m ostentatiously displaying its glories.” She tilted a laughing face towards Elizabeth. “Don’t you think it’s rather lovely?” she inquired. “The strange flower just under the butterfly excited Daddy’s interest. He had an idea that it’s a Tetrapetalous Argemene Mexicana, but he isn’t sure. Anyway, I tell people that it is, because it sounds so impressive.”

“What is it in its week-day clothes?” asked Stephen, poking daisies into the buckle of Elizabeth’s shoe. He was seated on the grass, between their chairs.

“My dear, I haven’t a notion! I hope no one ever tells me, because it’s sure to be something quite ordinary and unromantic.”