‘Indeed. And now they are adding a new French author to their list, Guy Mollinet. He was so charmed by Julietta over dinner at the Café Anglais that he signed a contract with Ashton Sims the very next morning.’

‘Yes. I had heard that Mrs Sims is incomparably beautiful.’

Jane felt herself blushing and quickly bent her head and pretended to wipe her mouth with her table napkin. She realised that the very saying of Julietta’s name could make her tremble and she told herself henceforward never to speak of her lover, lest her feelings revealed themselves in all their nakedness through the agitation of her body.

She poured more tea for her father, who was eagerly biting into a cream-filled brandy snap, and said: ‘Monsieur Mollinet’s novel is set in the Paris Morgue. And he was kind enough to show us round the place, where you know the dead are laid out for public inspection. Is that not a macabre idea?’

‘Quite macabre. But it surely has a purpose: that the dead who are missing are found by their relatives.’

‘Yet many people gathered there to gawp at them did not seem to be relatives. They appeared to think of the experience as an entertainment, as though they had been at a puppet show or a zoo.’

‘It is normal. The dead fill us with gladness because we are not yet among them. But speaking of the dead, I am going to put into your hands tomorrow a certain Mr Latimer, on whom Doctor Ross and I operated a little while back. As we feared, he is dying. He has been told that his one last hope of life is to return to the Baths and be put into your care.’

‘What is he dying of?’

‘His lungs are congested with very small tumours. Doctor Ross saw them, when I could not recognise them for what they are. There is no doubt that he will die, but you will do your best for him, to ease his pain.’

‘Can you not operate a second time, to take the tumours away?’

‘He is not strong enough to bear it. And I certainly could not contemplate performing such an operation on my own.’

‘Would not Doctor Ross assist you?’

‘He would. But he left Bath yesterday. He will be gone a little while.’

‘Oh, to where is he travelling?’

‘I didn’t enquire. He told me he is very tired and he has not looked well for some while. I think he will go somewhere quiet and solitary.’

Jane was silent. For reasons which she couldn’t quite fathom in herself, she felt disappointed by this news. One of Emmeline’s last instructions to her had been to ‘look with a new eye upon your poor Valentine’ and now she was to be denied so much as a glimpse of him. She wondered what ‘solitary’ place he would choose and what he would do there. Furthermore, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering whether, in his new loneliness, Valentine Ross would think of her.