Jane wrote to her father, commiserating with him upon the departure of Mrs Hughes, upon Becky’s insubordinate mood, and upon the inadequacies of the new nurse, but explaining to him that the portrait was of great importance to her aunt and that she really couldn’t desert Emmeline until it had been completed.

On the subject of Valentine Ross, Jane wrote: ‘I am sorry that Dr Ross appears agitated and distracted. I have no idea why this should be so. But I venture one reason: perhaps it might be that he has been too long working with you in Bath? Should you not ask him if he would not prefer to set up his own practice in Swindon, or in Swansea? Men cannot always keep finding contentment with what they have. Sometimes, they must move on.’

After her letter was posted, she decided to think of all this no more.

And then something happened which surprised her so completely that she wondered whether she hadn’t wandered into a state of mild insanity.

It occurred at one of the select soirées Emmeline liked to give from time to time, to reassure herself that London Society (or at least some bohemian section of it) still admired her and her work. These took the form of late suppers, served with champagne, at which the guests could come and go and wander, eat and drink as they chose and sit anywhere they liked, whether at Emmeline’s table, in the studio, on the stairs, on a Turkey rug in front of a fire, or even, if they wished it, in Emmeline’s bedroom.

Patient serving staff, dressed in velvet breeches and white wigs, progressed up and down the house, carrying trays of glasses and dishes of chicken breasts in aspic. Guests might cry out from odd corners of any room for champagne reinforcements. It had been known, once, for sexual congress to take place in a wardrobe, causing some disruption to Emmeline’s long, brightly coloured gowns. The ambience was louche and the talk mostly amusing and highly decorated. It was often remarked that, in this house, the guests felt wickedly free to do exactly as they chose. ‘Chez Emmeline’ was considered a marvellous place to be.

For this particular soirée, Emmeline had invited some thirty people: artists, sculptors, musicians, writers, professors of moral philosophy, publishers, actors and singers.

Finding herself in this thrilling company, wearing her favourite scarlet dress and an opal necklace, Jane felt a hectic excitement take hold of her, as though she might have been a tall ship becalmed, which had suddenly found the wind filling her sails. She let her glass be refilled with champagne many times, was amused and delighted to have her ‘beautiful height’ commented upon by a mighty tenor, who had put no less than six pieces of chicken-in-aspic on his plate, to listen to the intimate woes of a writer, who found himself ‘in a featureless desert of non-creation’, and to trade some amusing banter on the subject of the ever-changing landscape of the London Art Scene with a sculptor whose only aim, he said, was to make ugly things, to provoke the world into scoffing at his work, ‘for what people at first scoff at, later on becomes the thing of greatest value. I exist to make money. Patience is the only commodity needed.’