It was difficult for Latimer to talk, but at length he said, ‘I am told I should not hope. But perhaps you will give me hope?’

‘Certainly I will,’ said Jane. ‘The waters have saved many lives, as I’m sure you know.’

‘You see,’ said Latimer in a choked whisper, ‘I have not yet overseen all the decorations to my upper floors. My workers are so slow and my wife is very vexed that nothing is complete …’

‘Well then,’ said Jane, ‘should we immerse your painters and plasterers in the Baths also, to try to hurry them up?’

A wan smile now creased Latimer’s wasted features. ‘Or drown them?’ he said.

‘Ah yes,’ said Jane, ‘although as a rule, we try not to drown people, don’t we, Father?’

‘As a rule,’ said Sir William. ‘Now, Mr Latimer, Jane will come with you in the chaise and oversee your immersion, and you will soon be feeling the great benefit of sulphur and steam. I will visit you at your house this evening.’

‘Yes,’ said Latimer. ‘Very good. But I remind you it is the old house you must come to, for the new is not yet ready for us. My men are such laggards …’

Now, Jane was helping Latimer to climb into the Hot Bath. In its jade-coloured depths, the trembling legs of the other patients could be seen, their modesty-gowns folding and unfolding around them, like the drapery on a frieze of Roman statues.

Latimer clung to Jane’s hand until he was immersed in the water up to his shoulders, but when he was in, he looked bewildered, as though something else was expected of him which he had not yet comprehended.

‘Shall I move about?’ he asked Jane.

‘You have no need to move,’ replied Jane. ‘Just feel yourself at rest in the water. But you may walk, or swim, if you feel strong enough. Try to breathe as deeply as you can.’

Jane was now looking down at Latimer’s head, where a few first stains of old age stippled his balding pate. What she – rightly – understood about this man was his overwhelming desire to remain in the world, to see his grand house completed, to marvel at decorated ceilings, at reeded skirtings and papered boudoirs. He was a person held to life by material splendour. Now he was forced to contemplate the loss of it all and Jane was able to imagine how hugely this filled him with despair – and this moved her.

Emmeline had reminded her that the human mind is capricious and does not always feel ‘appropriately’; it can mourn for the loss of those who have done little that is deemed admirable in the world. Told by her father that Latimer was a ‘wretched manufacturer of glue, who has made his fortune out of animal bones’, Jane nevertheless wished to make up her own mind about him and decided that she felt true compassion for his plight.

She watched Latimer wade out very slowly towards the centre of the Hot Bath and as he did so, a young woman, holding up a child in the water, approached her.